Authors: Brad Willis
“You need to follow the program and do what you are told. Be on time, wait in the patient lounge between your classes, and always be quiet and respectful.”
I have never been good with authority figures, even when I was in perfect health. I'm starting to grit my teeth.
“We can test you for drugs and alcohol any time we choose,” Ms. Mason reminds me dryly. “If you refuse these tests, you will be dismissed from the program.”
Just as she starts to get under my skin, I remember that tough love is good for me right now. I have to find a way to shift my attitude. Not be so sensitive, judgmental, or easily irritated. I smile and nod yes to everything. Pay full attention. Do my best to sit up like a good boy. It's not easy. I'm lucky it's a short session. The second it's over I stumble to the patient lounge, cane in one hand, holding the wall with the other.
There's a couch
. I splay myself out on it, rules be damned.
A few minutes before my next meeting, two more patients come into the lounge. James is in his early twenties. He broke a hip and knee in a bad car accident. I can feel his pain as I watch him try to get comfortable on a metal chair, so I sit up to make room for him on the couch. Maria is middle-aged and has fibromyalgia, a condition associated with stress and anxiety. She suffers constant pain in her muscles and connective tissues. She has trouble holding still and can't bring herself to sit down. Her whole body trembles as she paces back and forth. They both tell me that they began treatments here when the center first opened three months ago.
“There are very few patients in the program,” Maria says softly as she finally sits on the chair and nervously shakes one of her knees back and forth. “I don't understand why. It's been very helpful to me. I think maybe it's because the insurance companies don't want to pay for these treatments since this is not considered mainstream medicine.”
James quickly agrees, saying his family has been paying his bills for the time he's been here. They've been appealing to his insurance carrier, but the claims have been denied and the family money is running out. Both James and Maria fear they might have to leave
the program. It's clearly a lifeline for them, like it is for me. We understand each other without much explanation. Brothers and sisters in the tribe of the wounded.
10:00
A
.
M
.
Dr. Kozin is casually dressed in dark slacks, a powder-blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a loose, paisley necktie. He's in his mid sixties, with a full head of soft brown hair and a few too many pounds around the middle, like me. He's reviewing my file when I enter his office, and without glancing up says, “Why don't you lie down on the couch. I imagine sitting up is painful as hell.”
What a relief to hear. “You're right, it's painful as hell,” I tell him as I melt onto the sofa. “I'm not sure how I'm going to get through this.”
“Let's just go slowly. First things first. Given your condition, with a damaged back and coming off narcotic medications, there are some new drugs you need to take. They are called Neurontin and Celebrex.” I cringe as he says this. “Don't worry,” he continues, “they are nonnarcotic and nonaddictive. They should help ease your pain and inflammation.”
Dr. Kozin explains that Neurontin is an epilepsy drug. Celebrex an anti-inflammatory medication developed for arthritis. The combination is being experimented with as a treatment for severe pain and muscle spasms. “I feel like it's a step backwards, but if it helps manage this pain, I'll try it,” I say as Dr. Kozin calls a nurse to bring a dosage. I swallow the pills and stuff the prescription in my shirt pocket.
“And one more thing,” Dr. Kozin says as he leans toward me with an expression of compassion and kindness. “This is a pain center, and we believe we have a lot to offer in that regard, but we have no expertise in cancer and we don't treat cancer patients. You'll need to stay in touch with your oncologist about that.”
“I understand. Thank you, doctor,” I say as I reach out and shake his hand.
Cancer
. The odds are overwhelming that it's going to end my life. Maybe it's still in remission for now, after the surgery and radiation. Maybe not. If I develop new tumors or more black spots
on my throat, it's game over. I'm not going to keep getting tubes stuck down my nostrils to find out.
Get up, Daddy,
I think to myself.
Change those things that are within your power to change. Find some dignity and be an example to Morgan no matter what happens
. I grab my cane and amble back to the patient lounge to collapse onto the couch again.
11:00
A
.
M
.
The Physical Therapy room is the largest facility in the center. There are a few treadmills, stationary bikes, and sets of weights, none of which I can possibly use. I already failed with gentler physical therapy machines long ago. This doesn't look promising. Against one wall is a large wooden frame holding a thick, firm pad. It looks like a giant bed, and as I roll myself onto it, it's the only thing here that doesn't intimidate me.
“Hello, I'm PJ, your physical therapist. You look like we need to start at the very beginning.” PJ is in her early thirties, tall, lean, and fit as a professional athlete, with a strong jawbone and thick, shoulderlength blond hair. “Let's check your alignment. But first you need to take off your back brace.”
PJ has me get up, remove my brace, and sit on a large, inflated rubber ball, stabilizing myself with my feet splayed wide on the floor. It's almost impossible for me to do this. I shake, flail side to side, and have to grab for the frame of the bed or I'll fall off the ball. When I finally get steady, she holds a plumb line behind my back. It's a small metal weight with a pointed tip that hangs down from a long string, creating a perfect vertical line that reveals how out of alignment my spine is.
“This isn't good,” PJ says. “Your mid-spine, the thoracic, is curving far to the right, probably from your efforts to stay off your left leg since it was the left side of your vertebra that was broken.”
PJ explains we have to work on my posture, plus strengthen my back, stomach, and leg muscles, all of which are soft as jelly from so many years of inactivity.
“Instead of using this plastic brace, which only makes your muscles atrophy more,” she explains, “we want to build a brace of muscles around your lower back.”
Sitting on the ball, PJ asks me to lift one foot from the floor, then the other. I can't manage this simple movement even while holding the bed frame, and PJ needs to steady and support me. As I struggle to do something so basic, it hits me again:
I have to take charge of my weak, broken body. Somehow get stronger than the pain. There's no other way I'm going to make it through this program, much less reclaim my life.
Next, we go for a walk down the hall, leaving my brace and cane behind. I feel like a child surrendering his security blanket when I lean my cane against the wall. It's terrifying. The end of the hall is less than thirty yards away, but it looks like a mile to me. PJ has to assist me. She puts an arm around my waist. I reach around her back and hold her shoulder. I'm still dopey from detox and every step hurts, but I try to envision it as a journey of empowerment.
Get up, Daddy. Take charge of your body. Get up.
At the halfway point, there's a stairwell on my right leading up to the next floor. It can't be more than a dozen stairs, but it looms like a mountain I'll never climb without my brace and cane. At this point, I'm panting and sweating. I can't make it any farther down the hall. We turn around and slowly head back to the therapy room. I lie down on the big padded bed, and PJ slips an ice pack beneath my sacrum.
In a few days
, I tell myself,
I'll walk past those stairs. Eventually I'll make it to the end of that hall without an assist from PJ. I have to keep going. One step at a time.
1:00
P
.
M
.
Lacking the energy to make it to the hospital cafeteria for food, I stay lying down in Physical Therapy with the ice pack through the lunch hour. Then it's time for Biofeedback. I have no idea what Biofeedback is, but it sounds scientific and intriguing. I leave the back brace off, per PJ's orders, but grab my cane. There's no way I could navigate without it. Fortunately, the room is right next door.
God, I'm sore.
The treatment room is dark, with just enough light to navigate my way to a large recliner that sits facing two computer screens. There are a few other machines next to the computers, with tubes and wires hanging down, like in the surgical theaters
where I had my spine and neck operations. As I lean back in the recliner to get comfortable, a technician steps in, introducing himself as Arthur.
“These will monitor your brain waves, body temperature, and heart rate,” Arthur says as he gently places adhesive electrodes on my head, chest, back, and fingers. “You'll see the results as they happen on the computer screens, just like live television, only not quite as exciting.”
Once I'm hooked up, Arthur shows me my baseline. The screens are black, with colored lines coursing across them in real time. A green line pulses up and down with my heartbeat. A blue line tracks my body temperature and flows fairly steadily. A white line on the second screen tracks my brain waves as they spike up and down like a seismograph, illustrating the busy pace of my thoughts.
Arthur places headphones over my ears, then he has me close my eyes and lean back even farther in the recliner as he leaves the room. A tape begins to play with soft music as a deep, pleasing male voice says,
You are relaxing in a plush and comforting elevator, slowly ascending past thick, puffy white clouds. The sky is brilliant blue. It's warm and clear.
The soothing voice guides me on a journey in my plush elevator, floating above the Earth and into the heavens. I feel resistance at first, but soon notice my body relaxing to a level I've never experienced, not even when I was on drugs. It feels like physical tension is flooding out of me as my emotional anxiety starts melting away. I peek at the computer screens a few times as the instruments feed my responses back to me, illustrating this relaxation. I begin to realize something that never occurred to me before:
It's not just my physical body I have to heal, it's my thoughts and emotions as well
.
The biofeedback journey lasts half an hour, but seems like it's over in a flash as my elevator returns to Earth and Arthur reenters the room to say, “Okay, we're done for now.”
“That was amazing,” I say softly.
“Your response was amazing,” Arthur replies. “Your blood pressure went down, your heart rate lowered, and your mind relaxed. It usually takes longer than this to get such a good response.”
Whether he really means it or is just encouraging me, I grab hold of this rare praise. I need affirmation that I can do something right, that I have some power within me that I was unaware of, that I'm slowly heading toward some control over my life.
“Whose voice was that?” I ask Arthur. “It was mesmerizing.”
“Dr. Emmett Miller. A founder of mind-body medicine in America,” Arthur answers.
“Can you write that down for me?” My mind is as shaky as my body these days. My emotions are shipwrecked, and something was so healing about Dr. Miller's tape that I know I need more. Much more. I fold the slip of paper Arthur gives me and slip it into my pocket. Dr. Emmett Miller.
I have to find out about this man and his work. Explore mind-body medicine. Get fully involved with this process.
2:00
P
.
M
.
After Biofeedback I go to Jin Shin Jyutsu, which I can't come close to pronouncing. I'm so relaxed after listening to the guided visualization that it feels a little easier to walk, and I notice my breath is deeper and smoother as I enter the treatment room. Dawn is the practitioner. She's centered and serene, peaceful yet powerful, reminding me of the young man I met at my fiftieth birthday party who suggested I try Yoga.
“Jin Shin Jyutsu is an ancient healing science from before the time of Buddha,” Dawn says softly. “It all but disappeared long ago, until a man named Master Jiro Murai rediscovered it in the early twentieth century.”
Dawn explains that Master Murai healed himself of terminal illness through this science and subsequently became a great healer for others. Jin Shin Jyutsu is something like acupuncture, she continues, but without the needles. In the treatment, Dawn will hold certain points on my body where there are “energy locks” and, through the power of intention, send her own energy through these points. The more I'm able to relax and receive her energy, she adds, the more a natural balance is restored, allowing me to experience physical, mental, and spiritual harmony.
“We are shifting the attitudes that lie beneath your symptoms,” Dawn says as she has me lie down on a massage table. “The very heart of this practice involves creating a life of simplicity, calmness, patience, and self-containment, plus connecting with your higher power.”
The cynical foreign correspondent I used to be would have scoffed at this, but somehow it strikes a chord deep within me, especially after experiencing Dr. Miller's meditation. After so many years of pain, medications, and imbalance, the concept of seeking inner harmony suddenly seems logical and obvious, like something I should have realized long ago.
As Dawn places her hands on my head now, I feel a surge of energy enter my body. She asks me to breathe deeply and whispers that we will both be silent, no talking. After several minutes, she holds my right foot and gently presses her thumb into the arch. At the same time, she holds my left hand and presses her other thumb into my palm. Energy swirls within me. After twenty minutes she reverses the holds and I feel the energy flow in a new direction as I continue to breathe deeply, inwardly chanting to myself,
Get up, Daddy
the entire time. By the time we finish the session, I feel like I'm floating in an ocean of bliss. It astonishes me. All I've really done today is listen to a guided visualization and have someone lay hands on me to move energy around, and it seems like it's done more for me than fourteen years of Western medicine.