Frozen Teardrop (30 page)

It might surprise people that I am so open about this part of my life, but If I can help someone else I would do anything for them because I know how my parents and I had longed for this help while I was growing up. I am not ashamed about anything because I have led my life with the best of my ability. I am truthful about all else so why not talk about this part? It is only human to go through puberty and having it happen much later in my life affected me in more ways than you can imagine. I do hope that women reading my story will not feel the need to stop the natural process because of another goal, whatever that may be. Your health, body, and mind needs to come first, because I promise you I know that without them nothing else is possible in life. Please do not disregard those like I did. I did it all for my skating — to stay thin, to do the unattainable, and to be the special and invincible one. My ego had gotten the better of me and I paid the price.

Going through puberty is tough enough when you are a young teenager but to have to go through it in your mid-twenties is even tougher. Hormones take much longer to stabilize when your body starts to change later than the normal age for puberty. It was especially troubling when you have been brought up to believe that image is so important. I felt incredibly uncomfortable about my body and its changes, and it took me a while to fall in love with myself again. At that time I did not know how to deal with it all, and was afraid as a person in the public eye that people would now view me differently and perhaps not like me as much. Although I was so happy to have my body finally wake up, I had a fear of my body, which now felt new and foreign. It was like I had a whole new vehicle to drive.

Once more the promise my parents and I had made to each other that I would NOT move from Dubai until I was one hundred percent well would not be kept. I had the beginnings of going through puberty but my mother and I were antsy that I needed more medical care and even more antsy about our delusional perception that I was not doing anything. I was resting, reading, relaxing and healing and my mother and I were not used to it. I had never done that in my life!

Since I wasn't being treated for everything else that I was going through we thought I needed the more specialized care of a doctor in America. I had pushed my body into being dormant for twenty-five years without giving it a minute to breathe so I knew in addition to specialized care I also needed to give it more time and space. But we were as usual more interested in doing more and more and more. We were on a ball going downhill so fast we could not stop it.

When an opportunity for me to teach in a new ice rink in Wayne New Jersey came up my mother sprang at the opportunity. I did not. I cried inside. At that time, the very last thing I wanted to do was teach and especially did not want to move away just for that reason. I wanted to stay with my family, and not go back to America. I did not see the point in moving once more to a place because of an ice rink. Why did this opportunity come up? Was it a test to see if we had the strength and courage to dismiss it and let my body heal without being on the ice? If so, we failed miserably. My mother insisted I needed to make a living. She said that after all the money my parents had spent on me why was I so selfish to say no to making money in the sport I knew best? That would be outrageous.

I could not win with my mother and did not have enough energy to fight back. I got more distraught seeing her so upset. I could not understand her wanting me to teach and even still wanting me to perform when I was so unwell. This decision to move to Wayne, New Jersey was my mother's. If we were moving back to the States, in order to go to a hospital for my needs where I could be treated, I would have agreed, but not an ice rink. Once more all the things in life that I was now trying to leave completely behind so that I could heal would once more be continued and again I would fall back and be frozen in time.

I remember the evening before our flight to New Jersey. It will be etched in the painting of my life forever. My mother knew I did not want to go and she could not contain her frustration with me. Why was I always making it so difficult for her? She lashed out at me and had one of her serious fits of hitting me, screaming, and utterly going crazy.

In the commotion of it all I called my holistic doctor to see if she could calm my mother down. She was not able to do this, but told me sternly that my mother and I should not go since she felt we were not ready to embark on a new adventure. We did not listen. I don't know what use it was having other people trying to help us since my mother never listened when it came to herself. She was the puppeteer, the captain of the ship. I looked at her and for a moment everything went in slow motion and all was silent. I just watched her body and lips move, and all I could see was sadness, desperation, anger, fear, love, and despair inside of this beautiful, majestic, and strong woman who had absolutely no more hope, dreams, or will left in her in life. It was the dance of terror.

It rang true to me when my mother would say, “I am going to die soon anyway.” Those words hurt me more than my mother will ever know. To feel that I was the cause of all her despair was something I could not live with. Even my father could not stop her behavior. My heart sank and bled. I did not care if it bled to death. I wanted to die for my mother. I did not know what else to do. I have no idea how we boarded the flight, but we did, and once more went on the way to times of more terror awaiting us. We had all lost our minds, heart, and soul, and for what? I, Lucinda, had become invisible.

(WAYNE, LOS ANGELES)

Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less,in human beings of whom they know nothing.
Voltaire

L
iving within a lie while knowing the truth, yet having no way to live the truth, is the most painful and destructive situation that can be given to you or that you can take upon yourself. The one thing I loved most could kill me. The one thing I lived, breathed, and had strived for every single day of my life, day in and day out, had been my spins. Now I felt God had given me a gift but in return had taken everything else from me. How could I truly comprehend anything anymore unless I was Lucinda with and without the gift? There had been always so much more to me than my spinning but I had never been allowed to show it.

Emotions are not deadly things and yet I feared them. Emotions are merely part of your body and mind telling you what your heart and soul is feeling. But since I had to live so long being emotionless, especially when being a part of the Japanese culture, I did not know anything about my feelings. Sometimes I think the surroundings of a person's childhood can be even more influential than their own DNA and I feel I had morphed into some of the characteristics of a Japanese person on the inside rather than being who I truly was. I needed to understand my emotions. What I came to understand is that letting go of and releasing emotions can help one's sadness and one's own suffering, but if you turn your emotions back on yourself they can become the source of madness. I had learned to stuff all my emotions deep within me and therefore I had become mad. There was no way around it. I had created my own suffering.

Wayne would be filled with days of teaching at skating rink and days of doctors' visits and treatments and I already dreaded the days to come. I could feel we were there for no reason and no fruition. I felt it was only a required bus stop en route to my destiny. I thought I was definitely not on the fast track of life. I was on the bus that stopped on every corner to refuel. Maybe this way I was to see life more clearly then have it whizz by me. Maybe this way I was meant to experience every single wobble on the earth's surface and every single rut and pebble under my feet. I was meant to feel that pea under the mattress. I was meant to suffer for greater things to come.

For each doctor I had so many symptoms that they did not know where to start, where to end, what to look at first. They were trying to look at the whole picture but if you don't lift off each stone in the right order to get to the source, a way to heal me would not be found. I was having so many therapies that I was busy around the clock watching the time in order to take what medicine from which doctor at what specific hour. To top it off I was getting frequent IVs because I was so weak. The IVs lasted for almost three hours and lying next to cancer patients and people with many other illnesses, was incredibly depressing. I was always the youngest in the doctors' offices. It was incredibly sad for my mother to watch me lying down with needles stuck in me with a solution dripping into my veins. She sometimes watched me cry and I know it tore her apart. It had come to this again, and for what? To kill myself in order to do something in the world that no one else did?

I was composed when in public but at home I started getting crazy. The illness was making me absolutely nuts. To be feeling sick every single day for seven years was just too much for me to handle anymore. It felt like my skin was crawling and I desperately wanted to shed it. I wanted a whole new body. I tried so hard to contain myself but I could no longer. I was now starting to have mini-seizures as well. My body would shake and become paralyzed and I could not move my lips or fingers or arms or legs. It was terrifying and my mother rushed me to the hospital many times. I felt so sorry for her. It was understandable that my mother once again broke into her fits many more times. We were all trying so hard and yet I never woke up feeling any better. I was actually feeling worse than ever before.

We stayed one year in Wayne, New Jersey until near the end of 2006 and were unable to find any doctors who improved me with their treatments. I wanted to go back to Los Angeles where someone had recommended a reputable and famous doctor who specialized in all my symptoms. One thing my mother and I did was to never give up hope. We had so much of it somehow. It seemed unimaginable to have that much in times like this but God was giving us strength. My father far away gave us all the support he could and kept up his hopes, too. My mother and I really had no one else to turn to.

Once back in Los Angeles my mother and I were happy to start treatment with a new doctor. The little bit of energy we both had left we gave to our hopes and trust in the new doctor. I would go through five different major doctors' treatments during my next two years of living in Los Angeles, four treatments for all my different ailments and one specifically for my back pain. All the while, my mother drove me to all the ice rinks around the city. Every day for two years consisted of driving to the rink to teach and train while still holding on to the hope I might skate again, and then driving to doctors for treatments, then driving home to sleep, and then beginning this all over again the next morning.

When in the past I ate, slept, skated and studied, now I was to eat not much, sleep not well, teach in tears, and be treated at doctors' offices. I was a dead-alive person. Really, there was no other way of putting it. I felt truly dead emotionally, physically, mentally, yet alive because I was still breathing. When would my luck change? I could not believe how long my mother and I endured this hardship. This was our second time to try having a good life in this city and we hoped for better results.

From 1999 until this time I had thought that I had hit rock bottom so many times that I would be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel fairly soon. But I had never hit as far down as I did in those two years in Los Angeles. The only way I could think was, “Let me hit so far down that I will create such a big bounce when I come back up, that I will reach high, high up into the stars.” That was my only hope and without it I just wanted to die. I made myself believe it. What else could I do? It took about one hour for my mother to drive me to my first doctor in L.A. and I slept each way. I underwent tests like never before, such as being x-rayed by having my body filled with all kinds of liquid solutions so my body would light up under the machines. I even had a sleep apnea test that I was so scared to go to that my mother had to sleep next to me in the bed. I was hooked up to so many wires I looked like a robot.

I never met so many doctors and underwent so many tests as then. Every single day I was being tested and tried, bruised and banged up. I was exhausted, terrified and sad beyond expression and belief. They analyzed me once again for everything they could think of, all reaching one conclusion of chronic fatigue syndrome. I could not believe and did not want to believe I had that. I just did not feel it in my bones.

But I went through the endless treatments. I had to take so many pills I was hardly eating anything. I could not stomach anything else. I had my IV treatments twice a week. My arms were black and blue from all the needle punctures. I was on every diet imaginable. I had gone through being a vegetarian, eating only raw food, or only protein, or only wild grains, or a type O blood type diet, or having only juices, or just fasting and cleanses. I mean my body had gone through so much it felt like it was starting to reject every single thing I put in it.

Every day I read self-improvement books and health and diet books. Anything in the bookstore sold to help the self was in my library. I read and read and although I had become such a health fanatic I was getting more and more sick. What was I doing wrong? One of the doctors referred me to a hormone specialist in Beverly Hills as well, since all my hormones were completely off-balance. They said I had adrenal fatigue, thyroid problems, and again everything you can name. In addition to all my pills from the first doctor this second doctor had me rubbing and swallowing hormones at all times of the day.

Sometimes I was completely confused about what to take when and what reaction to expect from each. My hormones were completely out of sorts to start with, but they just went off the charts once I started the hormonal treatment. I went from growing mustaches to losing hair, from having my breasts grow and to then having them disappear completely, from having a period once a month to having a period lasting for a month, from crying every day to giggling every day. I became a walking health dictionary and an emotional wreck! I knew everything about everything but knew nothing about what I had. The problem was I had so many problems.

For my back pain I went to another spine and nerve specialist since I was in knife-like pain everywhere in my spine and hips and the pain was going down my legs. More MRIs and X-rays were done and they wanted to give me another medication for the pain and nerve damage but since I was already on so much medicine I refused to take that one. By now I had seen three doctors and almost a year had passed. I had everything you can imagine to try to heal me. I had healing bracelets, healing beds, healing mattresses, healing towels, healing cushions, healing rings, healing massages and Reiki sessions.

All these doctors cost my parents an arm and a leg and a heart and a brain! Many of the treatments and medications, especially all the alternative ones, were not covered by our health insurance in Switzerland. I was burning a hole through my parents' bank accounts once more. I felt so incredibly guilty and I could not really do anything more than I already was.

The first doctor had prescribed Adderall for me because I was more than exhausted, to the point where some days I could barely utter a word. My arms were so tired that I could barely pick up the phone. My legs were so tired I could not walk up and down the few stairs we had in our new home. I was on the sofa bed all day too tired to read or to watch television. I just lay there looking at the ceiling waiting for the hours to go by, hoping to sleep at night. I was more tired than ever, yet inside my nerves were so shaken that I felt like I trembled nonstop. I was totally physically and mentally broken down. Consequently the doctor had me on pills to wake up and pills to go to sleep!

Then the first doctor prescribed for me to inject myself twice a day with Heparin. They said my blood was clotting and not circulating so I needed to thin out my blood. I had bags and bags of needles and solutions. My home looked like a walk-in pharmacy! Medicine was everywhere. My whole stomach and legs looked like chicken pox from needle holes. I felt like a very sick person when injecting myself twice a day, but I would have done anything to be well.

I would not have minded doing all the routines the doctors prescribed if I had felt better but nothing improved. I stayed with those first three doctors for almost one year. It was an absolutely crazy life. It wasn't a life. It was hanging on to the last thread of life. I can't explain it any other way.

We decided it was time to find another doctor and start another treatment plan. The fourth was an alternative doctor. He supplemented his treatments with a lot of herbal medicine, claiming he had treated and cured many celebrities. We were up for anything so we agreed to his regimen. For another six to eight months we allowed my body to be treated by him since prior to him each and every doctor had seemed helpless. They were so baffled by my situation and did not know how to help.

This new alternative medicine doctor complained about my being on so much medication. He told me to throw it all out. I don't know what he was complaining about when he just replaced them all with his herbal medications. One day I counted the pills he had me take and they amounted to almost seventy pills that I had to swallow a day!

Again I did anything I was told. I made sure I did not skip one pill and I did not eat one thing I shouldn't. It was a full time job trying to get healthy! I believed in each and every doctor and treatment fully since I knew believing was powerful, but nothing changed. I just became more and more sick, more nauseous, and more tired. I was rushed to the hospital by ambulance many more times within the next eight months for mini-seizures and fainting spells.

At this time I had no social or work life — no friends, no boyfriend, and no acquaintances. I mean how could I even go somewhere or meet a friend when I was so tired and unsociable and had to have my mother by me all the time? As much as my mother was trying to push me to enjoy my young life, it was impossible.

Suddenly, toward the end of the summer in 2008 something drastically changed. I made a decision, basically because I just had no more strength, to give up fighting the flow of life. I completely altered my mentality. I did not mind anymore if I did not wake up the next morning. I knew in my heart I had tried everything. I thought if I did not wake up, I would then be at long last free of my pain. It was a little scary to not care at all but also quite freeing. I gave up my fight to push what maybe was not my destiny.

Every night before falling asleep I spoke to God and said, “If you really do not need me on this earth and it is my time to go to you, please take me now, because it is too painful for me to be here. But God, I promise you, if you let me live and become healthy once more I will do everything possible in my life to be an inspiration to help to heal others. I will serve you. I will try to protect those who need protection as I needed it while growing up. I promise to heal the world in my way.” I would cry myself to sleep as I tirelessly repeated this conversation with God over and over again. Every morning I awoke to the sun shining, and therefore I knew God needed me more on earth than in the heavens. But, I continued to just let go of everything, to not think, to not want, to not try. I could not fight anymore. I had been told all my life to fight and I had no more power to do it.