Ratso and Me

So I’ve been doing interviews to promote the book. Brian Lehrer, Rachel Maddow at Air America, a really fun one this week at The Bryant Park Project on NPR, which, if you don’t know, is a kind of groovy morning show and website.

The trouble was, I’ve had a really horrific cough for a week. Last week in fact I had to postpone some interviews because my voice was so croaky. And then this cough thing started and would erupt at any moment, completely out of the blue. It would go on and on.

I felt like Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, except for not peeing myself or dying on a Greyhound bus. At least not yet.

The thing is, by Day Four, I really was starting to think What If. What if this is something serious? What if I have

Tuberculosis
The Plague
Whooping Cough (my husband’s contribution)
Or…wait for it…
Lung Cancer

This is what happens to people once they’ve had a shocking case of the Big C. You get a little paranoid. Okay, a LOT paranoid. And even when you tell yourself, as I always do, that you can’t have cancer if your systems can be cured by over the counter drugs, you can’t help being hypochondriacal. (Tums is a great cure for my regular bouts of “stomach cancer”, by the way).


HERE is a link to my interview at The Bryant Park Project.


And HERE is a link to the interview I did with Brian Lehrer on WNYC. He is such a good interviewer. Plus we got to take phone calls from the audience, which I love.