Feeling a bit better but have lost four pounds. And it looks as if I will lose more since I can’t eat today either and I can barely drink enough of anything to get my pills down. I cough most of it back up. Razor blades in my throat down from 20 to about 6.

I managed to drink half a rocks glass of water and then started coughing. Yesterday I tried to have chicken broth. Couldn’t get any down. I was planning, if things didn’t get better, to go back to the hospital for hydration. Not getting fluids is a major disaster. If I can eat a bit today, I’ll wing it here.

When I was younger, painful illnesses were always a bummer but I never felt threatened. Now I do.

On more cheerful matters, looked at a copy of the Sunday USA Today supplement and Jane Fonda is on the cover. She looks fabulous and I do think she’s had plastic surgery, and it was a great job and why not. She’s 73. Way to go, girl. When I first started dancing in the 60s, Jane was also in my ballet class and I once helped her button something she couldn’t reach in the dressing room. Ah, fame.

The greatest thing about being in Manhattan is that, in the right neighborhoods, and sometimes in lowly ones, you run into actors all the time. Telly Savalas used to film Kojak on the Lower East Side where I lived. And early on, Jan Sterling was in a movie being filmed right there on 2nd St. on my block. They must have needed a really grungy looking location because that’s what they got. I told Jay, as I left for work, that I fully expected to be stopped and recruited into the picsha. “Who is that girl, stop her!!” I was wearing my Hollywood sunglasses of course.

I love New York still but I don’t know if I am strong enough to live there again.

xx, Teal