by Brad Willis
After a long wait, I’m finally called in. The pain specialist immediately makes me wary. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’ve always had good instincts. He’s in his mid forties and looks more like someone you might find at a disco club than in a medical office. He talks too much about his expertise. Lacks the seasoned humility and compassion of Drs. Mooney or Chen. He also seems rushed and indifferent. Maybe my instincts aren’t so good these days. I’ll try anything to stop the pain. But the guy is a creep. I have to tell myself, Just get this over with. What have you got to lose?
It’s two o’clock in the afternoon when I put on a hospital gown and lie on my side on a metal table. My lower back is scrubbed with antiseptic soap and shaved around the area where the needle will be inserted. Pillows are wedged between my knees and under my head, but I can’t get comfortable.
“This will take time,” the doctor says. “We are going slowly. After it’s done you just lie here and rest until someone comes to get you.”
Despite this prelude, it still feels like he’s distracted and hurried. I almost call it off, but the promise of a month or two of relief is too tempting. I close my eyes and think about a healing waterfall cascading around me. I can feel the needle moving in deeper now, a few stages at a time. It takes fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. The injection is cool and tastes metallic again, like the radioactive tracer used during my bone scans. Time seems to be suspended as I drift off for a few minutes. When I wake up, I realize the doctor has left without saying a word. I’m all alone. There’s no one in sight.
As I lie here on the table, I pay close attention to my back, trying to see if I notice any soothing effects from the corticosteroid. Instead, my head starts to pound. It feels like hot ice has been injected into my brain. Both hemispheres are throbbing like crazy. Suddenly, I begin to sweat all over. Now I’m freezing cold. It flashes back and forth, sweating then shivering, my head pounding harder and harder.
I’m trying to stay with it. Relax and let it pass. But it gets worse. Has it been thirty minutes or an hour since the doctor walked out? Why is no one checking on me? I call out for someone. Anyone. It’s painful to make the sound. More throbbing in my brain. I call louder, yelling, “Heyyyyyy,” shivering with the chills. It hurts to open my eyes. Pleading for someone even louder now, worrying that I shouldn’t sit up yet, and that I might not be able to anyway. Louder. Screaming now. Holding my head between my palms.
“Oh, my God, what is it?” The receptionist rushes in.
“Get the doctor!” I yell at her. “Something’s gone wrong!”
“He went home a long time ago,” she says. “I’m the only one here. I was supposed to check you out in about five minutes.”
I will later learn that I had a “dural puncture.” The doctor missed the mark and punctured the membrane covering my spinal cord, resulting in a leakage of my spinal fluid into the epidural space. This causes acute, debilitating headaches that can last several days.
When the receptionist tells me the doctor is gone, I completely lose it and start screaming at the poor woman. Kenny hears my outburst and rushes into the room.
“Are you okay? What’s going on?”
“Get me out of here,” I say, holding my temples in my hands. “Please take me home.”
“Shouldn’t we go to the emergency room?”
“No. Please, Kenny. I’ve had it. Just get me home.”
CHAPTER 15
Final Season
CHRONIC PAIN is consuming. It eats away at you day and night. Robs your body of its energy. Twists your emotions into knots. Like being locked in an invisible prison and continuously subjected to torture. Your tolerance level nosedives. The smallest stressful circumstance sets you off and brings out the worst in you. As the months roll by and my back pain continues to gnaw away at me, I see the negative side of things in an instant. I’m rude and pushy without meaning to be and can’t seem to control it. I easily take offense at real or perceived slights and am quicker to lash back if I sense an adversary. I don’t like myself this way, but I can’t figure out how to turn it around.
At the same time, I cling to a thread of hope that I’ll eventually escape this nightmare. I have to hold onto something or I might completely break down. I trundle around in my Clamshell brace and keep turning on the Stim, deluding myself that a miracle remains possible. Along with my lower back, my left leg is crippling me. Persistent sciatica shoots down the hamstring at least once a day. I have to use a cane to support myself when I walk, which I do as little as possible because these days I can barely tolerate it. I continue to eat and drink like a foreign correspondent, not even noticing how stoned I am or the weight I’m continuing to put on.
Years ago, I did reports on widespread struggles against addiction, but I’m delusional enough to believe this doesn’t apply to me. After all, the drugs are prescribed by the very best doctors. The wine is elegant and expensive. Anyway, I’m in crisis and have a right to spoil myself a little. It beats self-pity, doesn’t it? This is how warped my mind has become as it rationalizes self-destructive behaviors in order to cope.
The only treatments I can find offer little relief. Therapeutic massage. Ultrasound. Hot packs. Cold packs. I’m getting nowhere and need more ways to escape, like becoming hooked on bestsellers. I can read a thick novel in a day or two. The stacks of books on the floor by my bed could fill a bookcase. Volumes by Robert Ludlum, Scott Turow, Tom Clancy, Elmore Leonard, Ken Follett, John Grisham. I won’t admit it to myself, but I’m living vicariously. Numbing my mind with drugs, wine, and meaningless fictional intrigue to replace the global life of adventure and accomplishment I once enjoyed.
When I collapse into sleep, I often have a recurring dream. The characters and locales change, but the theme is always the same: I’m in my office in a newsroom. Reporters, producers, directors, and editors are running in every direction. The evening news is about to begin, but I’m just sitting there staring at the computer screen on my desk. I haven’t filed a report for months and feel tremendous guilt. No one has noticed yet, but the moment they do it’s certain I’ll be fired. I want to run to the assignment desk and beg to be sent into the field, but I can’t get out of my chair.
In reality, I can’t even sit in a chair anymore. It puts too much pressure on my spine. The hotel staff has brought a poolside lounge into the living room of my villa. This is where I take every meal, lying prone with my plate balanced on my growing belly, another novel open by my side so I can read while I eat. Half the time, I spill the plate, knocking the book on the floor and toppling my wine glass. This makes me scream out loud with frustration and rage—and then drink some more.
Pamela is in Hong Kong looking after our life there, and I don’t feel much like being social. It’s a lonely existence, but I do have a new friend. He’s an old duck, with graying feathers around his shimmering teal and green neck that bulge out to one side like it’s broken. He also waddles with a limp and is clearly in pain, making his takeoffs and landings very tenuous. I can sympathize.
The old duck arrives every morning as I’m lying on my lounge on the deck. He’s always looking for last night’s dinner bread, which I feed him with glee. I recognize his quack and sometimes mimic it to invite him in. In no time at all, we establish a bond. There was a TV show my parents watched when I was a child: I Love Lucy. An older couple, Fred and Ethel Mertz, were best friends and neighbors of the stars, Ricky and Lucy. The duck reminds me of Fred: a little portly. Slow. Aging. Kind. Easy to be with. When I leave the sliding glass doors to my bedroom open overnight, Fred the Duck waddles in the next morning to find me in the shower. To my surprise and complete delight, he joins me under the spray, wriggling in the water at my feet, nibbling at my legs, prodding me for bread, and quacking like crazy. It makes me laugh with abandon when I realize that Fred has become my best friend.
One day, Fred brings his partner, whom I name Ethel. Ethel is shy, and for three mornings straight she stays in the bushes framing the deck. She finally de
cides I’m safe and joins Fred, cautiously nibbling bits of bread from my hand. Soon, the three of us become a family. When mating season arrives, the young mallards on the hotel grounds are in a frenzy, cornering and assaulting all the hens. Unable to battle these stronger ducks, Fred brings Ethel to my villa to seek refuge. Sometimes I have to grab my cane and beat back a gang of young hopefuls as Fred and Ethel hurry into the living room and cower behind the couch, quacking up a storm.
Fred looks like he shouldn’t even be alive. It’s clearly his last season. Without me as his protector, Ethel would surely be taken from him by the younger males. I decide it’s his undying love for Ethel, and hers for him, that keeps him going. It reminds me of a lesson I learned long ago in the refugee hospital on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan where I met the little boy, Mahmoud, with napalm burns covering his body. A lesson about the power of love.
The medical staff was in a state of controlled overwhelm, doing the best they could with limited medical supplies and a stream of seriously wounded victims flooding in daily. During an interview, the head of the refugee hospital, Dr. Shahwani, noted how amazed he was that many of the Afghan patients overcame incredible odds and somehow managed to survive, even when it seemed medically impossible. The Pakistani fighters, however, who were mercenaries that joined the battle for money and ideological reasons, didn’t fare nearly as well even though their injuries were similar to those of the Afghans.
I remember that there was always a family member at the bedside of every wounded Afghan, but few in the ward where the Pakistani mercenaries were being treated. The people by the wounded Afghans’ bedsides were there around the clock, praying and loving them in their own quiet and reserved ways. That was it. The reason so many seriously wounded Afghans managed to survive against such enormous odds was due to the power of love. In much the same way, Ethel’s love for Fred the Duck is helping him through one last season, and Fred’s love is helping me along, even though I might not get another season in my life as a foreign correspondent.
Pamela has returned from Hong Kong and is with me now, as supportive as ever. We go to the pool, sit by the bay, take walks when I feel capable. I tell her about Fred and Ethel, who seem to have disappeared. It’s the only big story in my life these days, far from the sort of news I used to report. One morning, as I’m lying on my back on the living room floor, I hear Fred’s familiar quack. Then a chorus of tiny quacks. Suddenly, Fred and Ethel proudly enter the room with eight ducklings in tow. I whisper for Pamela to come in from the bedroom and meet the family. We’re all introduced, and soon a few of the ducklings hop over my legs and jump onto my belly. Then they waddle off. Fred gives me a glance and cocks his head to signal a final good-bye before winging into the sky. He’s in bad shape, but at least he can still fly.
It’s been a year now. Countless failed treatments. Thousands of pills. Gallons of wine. Scores of cheap novels. Endless false hopes. I know it in my heart. I have to face the truth. My time is up. I’ve lost the battle. There will be no return to my career. No more global travel. No more reports on Nightly News. No more of the life I loved more than life itself. I feel resentment, anger, fear, and failure.
I take the letter from NBC promising to hold my job, crumple it into a ball and hurl it against the wall. It hits with a crispy thud and falls behind the couch. Then I limp to my lounge, lean over to my computer, and compose a brief good-bye email to my former colleagues at the network before I’m deleted from the system. I make it as upbeat as possible, but I feel like a fraud trying to sound so positive. There’s a final visit with Dr. Garfin at UCSD, but it’s only a formality. Like a bird that can no longer fly, I’m officially declared:
PERMANENTLY DISABLED.
CHAPTER 16
First Prayer
THIS IS PARADISE. I wish I lived here!”
This is what we hear from most everyone who visits Coronado. It’s a stunning place, nestled in San Diego Bay with sunny skies, beautiful beaches, and world-class resorts. Ever since it was founded in 1885, it’s been a destination for the rich and famous from around the world. On any given day you can hear a dozen languages during a walk along the beach in front of the historic Hotel del Coronado, sitting like a Victorian jewel facing the Pacific Ocean. The Wizard of Oz was written in Coronado. Its author, Frank Baum, used the hotel as inspiration for his Emerald City, and the city’s main street for the Yellow Brick Road.
At the same time, Coronado is a quaint village of 30,000 residents that seems like a throwback to the 1950s, with small cafes and shops, quiet streets, and cozy homes. Despite the ridiculous cost of real estate, families often go to great lengths to move here just so their children can attend the excellent public and private schools. It’s also a military town. On the north end of Coronado there’s a Naval air base and on the south end, a Special Warfare Command, where the legendary Navy SEALs are trained. Retired admirals live on the village’s best streets in luxurious homes made affordable by their generous pensions.
Now that I’m classified as “permanently disabled,” staying in Coronado is the logical choice, especially with my family here. But despite its charm and quality of life, I can’t get used to it. Without my career, I don’t know who I am anymore and I’m no longer comfortable in my own skin. My body brace feels like a prison cell, especially with the thick metal shaft on the left side that runs down my sciatic leg and straps onto my thigh just above my knee. Even with this addition, I have to use my cane to further stabilize myself on my increasingly rare walks. I’m not sure which hurts more, my back or my heart. I just want to click my heels together like Dorothy did in the Wizard of Oz, whisper “There’s no place like home” three times, and miraculously be transported back to my home in Hong Kong, covering Asia for The Nightly News.
NBC was generous in providing a year with all expenses paid while I tried to heal and it continues to cover my health care. The network also compensated me well while I was a correspondent, covering all my expenses due to the requirements of living abroad and facing extensive travel. This allowed me to put almost every paycheck into a savings account, which was bolstered with stock from the parent company, General Electric. The savings are a godsend now, and the only sense of security I have. Almost every day, though, I wonder what will happen if and when the money runs out. It feels emasculating, like I can’t take care of myself or fight back against whatever my fate might be.
Despite everything, Pamela and I share an abiding love for one another. We’ve decided to get married and are trying to establish a new life. I’m not sure I’m worthy of this any longer, but she’s caring and compassionate and I need her more than ever, especially since my self-esteem plummeted after being declared permanently disabled. I often wonder if she feels love for the vibrant man I used to be and now holds more of a sense of obligation to the damaged and dependent man I’ve become. Given my lack of mobility, constant pain, and emotional fluctuations, I question my ability to be a good husband and meet her needs. Most of the time, I’m faking it—pretending to be happy and whole. This makes me feel guilty, weak, and inadequate.
I measure each day in handfuls of painkillers and antidepressants. With every dose, I get further away from any sense of who I am, and barely notice as time trudges by. It’s all blurry. Slow motion. Months soon become a year, and then two years. The changes in my body and mind are so gradual I don’t really notice my continued weight gain, increased weakness, and personality problems. As a journalist I was paid to be cynical, wary, contentious, and probing. Targets of my investigative stories were adversaries, usually trying to conceal their corruption and misdeeds. Now, almost anyone can become an adversary at a moment’s notice. I’m always looking for faults in others, finding hypocrisy that isn’t there, criticizing and blaming. If I witnessed someone else doing this, I’d dismiss him or her as obnoxious and insecure, but I give myself permission. After all, I think, I’m wounded. Life has been unfair. I have a right to be this way.
With my arsenal of medications, t
here are times I feel stable enough to attend social events and even take a rare vacation with Pamela, but there’s always a price to pay. Just as I begin to feel I might be making a slight degree of progress in my ability to cope with this life, a wrong move triggers a sharp thrust of pain in my tailbone, then radiates up my back into my shoulder blades and shoots down my legs to my heels. Every time this happens I’m bedridden for days. It’s so debilitating that I have to use a bedpan to relieve myself, which is profoundly humiliating and leaves me feeling even more frustrated and hopeless.
Even on good days, I can’t sit or stand for even a short time without the tip of the ice pick stabbing me again and scaring me to death. I have to lie down for almost everything. We’ve bought a folding lounge chair on wheels to take to parties, dinners, the local movie theater, and Coronado’s outdoor Sunday concerts at the park half a block from our home. Pamela packs the bulky lounge into the car, then has to drag it out, roll it to wherever we’re going, and set it up for me. As a result, most people treat me differently, usually with a sense of care and compassion. I’m starting to realize what it’s like to be the recipient of this. I’m touched to my core by the inherent goodness in so many people, yet I also feel embarrassed, and I instinctively recoil at being an object of pity.
Pamela also hosts dinner parties and does her best to keep me surrounded by people so that I feel engaged in the world. Yet even after two years, I have trouble relating to a suburban lifestyle. It’s like I’ve moved to a country where I barely speak the language. As a news correspondent, I lived in such a different world that it’s more than not speaking the language. I often feel like an alien from another planet. I’m used to glib journalists, cynical expatriates, and wry world travelers who talk endlessly about foreign policy, global intrigues, and which area of the world is likely to be the next powder keg. The conversations in this new world are more domestic in nature, filled with nuances and references I don’t understand. No matter how hard I try to fit in, something deep inside of me says you don’t belong, and every time I hear this inner voice I simply shut down.