by Brad Willis
Unlike the crowded streets typical of almost every other modern city in Asia, in Pyongyang people are nowhere to be seen. Many of the towering high-rises are perfect on the exterior, but unfinished and derelict inside. There are few cars on the roads, except for the occasional spanking new, black Mercedes Benz with government officials inside, often weaving the wrong way down a wide highway.
I’ve been in totalitarian countries before, but the paranoia here is unprecedented. The North Koreans want to completely control our agenda. Our hotel room is bugged and we are tailed everywhere. Our filming is heavily restricted. The few people we find on the streets are far too frightened to speak with us. We begin playing games to lose our followers and finally manage to shoot video of the empty buildings and desolate streets, grab a few interviews about the dismal economy and lack of freedoms on hidden camera, and do our best to document this strange story.
On the final day, we take a three-hour train ride with the Japanese entrepreneurs to a port farther north where Kim hopes they will set up shop. It’s a brutal trip for me, sitting on a hard metal seat while the dilapidated train bumps and sways like a cheap carnival ride. All we do at the port is watch the North Koreans escort the Japanese around a few vacant warehouses. We aren’t allowed to go anywhere else, and it’s a huge waste of time. When I get back to our hotel in Pyongyang at midnight, I’m on fire again. The flight back to Japan is even worse.
In our Tokyo bureau, I grit my teeth through days of writing and editing. I want to lash out at the whole world and almost scream out loud:
I can’t make it!
I have to stop!
It’s unbearable!
But my fear, my hubris, and a growing inner rage prevent me. I have to make it, shift my thoughts, tell myself it’s okay:
God damn this injury.
I am not losing this battle.
Just get through this until the fusion takes.
The pain will go away and you’ll be home free.
Before checking out of my Tokyo hotel, I swallow a handful of medications without counting the pills, then down a few glasses of wine on the plane back to Hong Kong. I used to keep track of my drinking, but these days I don’t care. It would be a great mistake for anyone to suggest this behavior might be self-destructive in the long run. I’m not open to such advice and would offer very unkind words in return. It wouldn’t be pretty.
After filing my reports from the Hong Kong bureau, it’s time to return to San Diego for a final checkup. I still have persistent pain, but the fusion is definitely supposed to have taken place by now. As I land at Lindberg Field, I can feel the little knot of uncertainty in my belly again, but do my best to ignore it and tell myself it’s a lie:
I’m just fine.
I’m going to whip this thing.
Great news is right around the corner.
The radioactive tracer feels colder and tastes steely this time as it’s injected into the same vein in my forearm. The electronic table hums as it slowly slides me beneath the bone scanner. The camera buzzes and clicks, sending new gamma images to the monitor. I close my eyes and visualize pictures filled with glowing hot spots at the base of my spine. A perfect fusion, solid as a rock. But I can see it in Dr. Assam’s eyes again when we sit down afterward.
“I don’t understand this,” he says grimly. “You are a perfect candidate for fusion. You’re young, strong, and otherwise healthy. You don’t smoke or have any other habits that would inhibit bone growth. You follow the orders, wear the brace, use the Stim. But there’s no evidence of fusion. None.”
“So how long will it take?” At the conscious level, I refuse to entertain any possibility of failure. At a deeper level, I know I’ve lost the battle.
“You have another three months at most.” Dr. Assam is not very convincing. “After that, it’s just not possible.”
I have to blame someone, so in my mind I blame the doctor. He must have botched this. He’s ruining my life. I want to clobber him. Instead, I say good-bye, slamming the door behind me as loudly as possible. As usual, I book the first flight I can find, knowing I’ll need to dope myself up again for a return to Hong Kong.
The pool at my apartment building on Victoria Peak sits on the edge of the steep jungle slope. I can lie down on a shallow ledge in the warm water and gaze east over the Hong Kong skyline toward the endless expanse of China. It’s a vibrant, exciting world filled with adventure, mystery, and intrigue that I have barely tasted. I feel like a beached whale.
Outwardly, I’m still avoiding the truth, but the knot in my gut has grown to the size of a grapefruit. It’s a big, roiling ball of stress eating away at me. I’m too physically and emotionally spent to take “robot walks” any longer. When I get to the bureau on a rare occasion, we talk about all the stories we’ll do once I’m better. Everyone knows it’s just talk. My producer, the camera people, the editors, all the staff, they know. Out of kindness, no one says a word as they continue to pretend that everything is fine as three months slip by and nothing changes.
It’s mid-1993 as I board a plane back to San Diego for a final evaluation. I struggle to get into my seat. I can feel that my back is still broken, and I’m losing all hope. Yet I have no idea that this is my final departure from Hong Kong or that I will never again return to my beautiful home on Victoria Peak.
The results of the new bone scan are the same. When I’m told this, the ball of stress in my gut explodes. It feels like hot acid flooding all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. I walk out of Dr. Assam’s office vowing to never see him again. In an act of final desperation, I make an appointment with Dr. Steve Garfin, chairman of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the U.C. San Diego Medical Center. Dr. Garfin is a leading authority on spinal surgeries. I’m hoping he’ll find some tiny glimmer of hope to which I can cling, something in the gamma pictures that everyone else missed. After a thorough review, however, Dr. Garfin also confirms that I have a failed fusion.
My only hope, he says, is a second surgery, this time with two alternatives, each far more invasive than the first surgery. In one option, the fusion would be redone with titanium rods screwed into my vertebrae to hold everything in place. In option two, they go in through the front, pulling all my abdominal organs out of the way and, working on the transverse side of the spine, insert cadaver bones between the lowest vertebrae.
Both procedures sound appalling, and the possibilities of complications are far greater than the surgery that has already failed. Still, I want to know the odds and assess my chances. I swallow hard and play reporter with Dr. Garfin. He’s candid: The odds are 50-50 for either procedure. As I press for details, the facts drop my jaw. Half the patients who have “successful” fusion operations end up with as much or more pain. Half whose surgeries “fail” experience significant reduction or a complete end to their pain.
To me, it’s clearly a roll of the dice. There’s no solid proof that any of these procedures work. Some recover and thrive. Others end up worse. Some are paralyzed. A few even die from infections and complications. The kicker is none of these results seem predicated upon whether the operation is technically deemed to be a success. Why didn’t Dr. Assam ever tell me this? I’m overwhelmed with rage. There won’t be a second surgery. I’m done with it.
I’m required to fly to NBC headquarters in Manhattan. Physicians for our parent company, General Electric, review the X-rays, bone scans, and doctors’ notes. GE’s doctors reach the same conclusion: failed fusion. They conclude that my condition is so severe that a trip back to the West Coast is dangerous enough. Returning to Hong Kong is out of the question. I start to protest, but the head doctor holds up his hand to silence me. “There’s no room for any discussion here. You are not returning to Hong Kong and that is final.”
In an act of surprising generosity, NBC agrees to continue my salary for a full year, cover all my living expenses, plus pay for extensive physical therapy. If I recover, they confirm in writing, my job will be waiting for me. I s
tare at the paper, realizing it’s all I have now, a document promising that my former life will await me for up to one year. As I slip it into my briefcase, I can feel a lump in my throat and have to fight back tears.
From the very beginning, when I landed my first reporter’s job at a small station in Eureka twenty years ago in 1973, I’ve been fully convinced that I could face any challenge, overcome any obstacle. My confidence was always solid as a rock. Now, two decades later, it feels like a facade, like one of those monolithic buildings in Pyongyang, North Korea, with a polished exterior concealing nothing but darkness, desolation, and emptiness within.
CHAPTER 14
Puncture
LE MÉRIDIEN HOTEL spreads out along the bay in Coronado with generous views of the San Diego skyline. It’s the sort of luxurious setting people often envision for their dream vacation. The restaurant’s French cuisine is superb. A Brazilian jazz band plays during dinner on the outdoor terrace overlooking a wide pool facing the bridge as it spans the bay to San Diego. The spa has Jacuzzis and saunas, massage therapists, and warm lap pools. NBC is being more than generous. I have a villa on the south end of the hotel complex, sitting quietly on a grassy slope, framed by coral trees and palms. I lie on my deck recliner watching the sunset reflect off the glass high-rises of the city. A gentle breeze caresses my face. Sailboats course the calm blue waters of the bay. But this is not a dream vacation and I find no joy in being here.
Pamela remains in Hong Kong, overseeing the process of packing up our belongings and coordinating with the news bureau to put them in storage. I’m on a desperate mission to explore every therapeutic modality available. I have one year to heal my back and reclaim my career, and for the first time in my life, I fear I’m losing control over my destiny. I look at the promise on the contract from NBC almost every day. I constantly give myself the sort of pep talks I’ve always given others to help them face challenges in their lives.
You must stay focused and manage the pain.
You have to get strong and healthy.
You will get back to work before this year runs out.
You can do this.
A renowned orthopedic surgeon named Dr. Vert Mooney, whose revolutionary therapeutic techniques have earned him national recognition, has designed my first physical rehabilitation program. In his early sixties, Dr. Mooney favors wearing wild, artistic ties with conservative sport coats. His snowy white hair is neatly parted on one side and his huge spectacles make his eyes gleam like an elf. His constant smile is infectious, revealing a gentle and compassionate man whose top priority is to avoid surgery whenever possible. At our very first meeting, Dr. Mooney lets me know he would not have recommended my first operation and he thinks a second surgery would be far too risky. When he shares this, I feel like steam is coming out of my ears and I want to strangle Dr. Assam.
“I doubt you would get any better with more surgery,” Mooney says frankly, “and you might end up much worse.”
Dr. Mooney believes I might have achieved a tolerable level of stabilization through his program, if only I had found him shortly after the initial accident. He explains that with a failed surgery, it’s a much steeper mountain to climb.
“Most people just won’t do the work,” he says. “They want a quick fix. One in which time and effort isn’t required. I don’t believe in that any longer. That’s why I avoid surgery.”
The clinic rehab facility looks like a cross between medical offices and a high-tech athletic training center. After an evaluation, Dr. Mooney escorts me into a large room filled with thickly padded exercise machines fitted with computers to track a patient’s range of motion and muscular resistance capacity. He has designed these exercise machines to stabilize the entire spine while seeking to enhance flexion and slowly build muscle strength in precise areas. I have to admit it scares me. I no longer have the discipline I used to take for granted. I don’t know if I can climb this mountain.
I’m assigned a personal therapist who completes a detailed evaluation then straps me firmly into several machines, guiding me into performing gentle movements with minimal resistance from the weights of the machines. It’s painful and I can barely stay with it. I keep whispering “You can do this” to myself as I strain against the light weights, but I fear I might be fooling myself. My muscles are soft and atrophied from so much time in the body brace. I’m tired and weak.
Still, I go three times a week and give it all the energy I can muster, hoping to be a miracle case of delayed fusion. That patient who astonishes all the experts. Or, I tell myself, I’ll get my feet back under me well enough to live with the pain and return to NBC. But after two months there’s no progress. Pain continues to grip my lower back and shoot down my left leg. Dr. Mooney lets me know it might be best to try some gentler alternatives, softly suggesting that I can try the program again if I improve. In the meantime, he has a prosthetic specialist modify my brace by adding a metal bar on the left side that juts down my leg to just above the knee, where it straps onto my lower thigh for more support.
Dr. Chen is from Taiwan and comes from a long lineage of renowned masters of Chinese medicine and acupuncture. He has me lying down on a padded table for up to two hours at a time, poking needles in my body from head to toe like I’m a pincushion. After several treatments, he hooks an electrical stimulation device to some of the needles. This sends currents through key energy points, like the Stim device I wear, but with much more power. I can feel pulsations and vibrations in the exact areas where the pain is most intense, and my hopes begin to soar.
Dr. Chen also performs an ancient technique for creating suction and increasing blood flow called “fire cupping.” He picks up a cotton ball with long metal tongs, soaks it in rubbing alcohol, and then lights it like a torch. He holds the flaming cotton inside a thick glass cup the size and shape of a tennis ball cut in half. The heated cup is placed on my lower back, just above the left iliac crest of my hips directly between the two scars from my surgery. It’s incredibly hot, but Dr. Chen artfully knows how to keep it just below the burning point. The heat creates a suction that draws my skin up into the cup, turning it bright red as blood floods into the area.
After learning about the bone scan procedure, and how “hot spots” indicate blood flow and potential bone fusion, the cupping technique makes sense to me. Make the stagnant blood flow in my sore back. Get energy moving and bring life back to the area. I feel optimistic after each treatment, and my hopes soar even higher. But the minor level of relief always fades away within a few hours, leaving me back where I began. After more than a month of needles and cups, plus a regimen of foul-tasting Chinese herbs, Dr. Chen sits down with me for a talk. His face holds an expression I’ve seen too many times before. I know this story too well.
“There is nothing more we can do,” he says with a sense of professional frustration. “I am afraid acupuncture is not going to heal you.”
I should be getting used to news like this, but it’s harder to take each time. A wave of emptiness rolls over me. My stomach feels nauseous. My skin tingles with fear. I just can’t face it. All I can do is pretend it’s not there. I stuff the emptiness so deeply down into my subconscious that nobody could ever find it. Not even me.
Every night in my villa I order fine French food from Le Méridien room service. As I lie down on a lounge chair, my dinner balanced on my lap, I stare out at the brightly lit skyline of San Diego, watching the colors dance across the bay. I eat far more than I need and usually drink almost a full bottle of Burgundy or Bordeaux. Lately, I’ve had to loosen the Velcro straps on the Clamshell body brace and my pants are getting too tight around the waist. Glancing in the mirror before bed, I realize that, for the first time in my life, I’m getting heavy. In the past, vanity would have prompted me into taking immediate action. Now, I don’t care. Fine food and vintage wines are among the few comforts I have left. Honestly, they’re more than comforts; they’re my escapes.
It’s been almost six months. I’m desper
ate. The only treatments I’m being offered are palliative. Palliation is the process of masking symptoms instead of dealing with underlying causes. In my case, this means finding ways to lessen the pain so I might be able to function a little better. Epidural corticosteroid injections are in this category. My doctors explain to me that a corticosteroid is a substance naturally produced in the adrenal cortex of the human body that reduces both pain and inflammation. For these injections, it’s made synthetically. Like the cupping in acupuncture, this procedure also makes sense to me. I recall how the pain went away when I was in a war zone or on a deadline with my adrenals pumping like mad. Maybe a steroidal substance from the adrenal cortex will trigger the same result.
For precision, I’m told, a fluoroscopic X-ray is used to guide a needle into the epidural space of the spine. The dura is the area between the protective covering of the spinal cord and the bony vertebra. It’s filled with fat and small blood cells and covers each of the spinal nerves as they leave the spinal canal. The steroid is mixed with an anesthetic numbing agent called lidocaine and injected into this sensitive area in hopes of relieving pressure on any inflamed nerves, like the one that keeps firing sciatica down my left leg.
Driving a car is next to impossible for me, and it’s not allowed following an epidural injection. My friend Kenny, who escaped West Covina with me when we were teenagers, has been visiting for the past several days and takes me to the appointment. Sitting in the waiting room, we reminisce about the days when we got lost in the redwood forests together, camped on remote riverbanks, and jumped off towering cliffs into deep pools by river waterfalls. The memories are comforting. I’m more at home with who I used to be. I have no relationship with the person I am now.