I'm Not Dead... Yet! (43 page)

with Karla was and is not only good for me (the patient) but it is extremely helpful to the people who love me. Trying to be the strong, heroic, silent type is cruel to them. I should know. It took me three surgeries to realize how hurtful it was to be silent and keep Karla (and others I love) in the dark. They are floating in the same sea of despair, yet they have no compass whatsoever—no frame of reference and they tend to think things like: ‘I don’t matter in his life;’ ‘I want to help him, but he won’t allow me to help;’ ‘Please, let me in…’

Now there is a new equation: your psychological problems from the surgery and your loved one’s psychological problems from your
silence
. It’s not valiant or noble to live in silence. I thought it was. I was wrong. It is courageous to discuss your fears, no matter how absurd they feel to you, with the people you love and trust. And, if it is more than they can handle (and you as well), seek out professional psychological help—and personally, my advice is to go see these doctors with your loved one. Let them in. Make this event in your life liminal—don’t allow it to consume you and your loved ones forever.

If you feel depressed, don’t delay—seek professional help!
If you feel a lack of joy; a lack of hope; if you feel like you don’t want to wake up the next morning when you go to sleep, seek professional help immediately. Please. I was against it in my own ignorance and found true value, but of course had to find the right person to talk to.

If you or a loved one want to know more about cardiac depression,
which is very real
, please go to this web site. It’s a great place to start:

Cardiac Depression

I needed to talk to a professional,
especially after someone close to me told me to skip the psychiatrist mumbo-jumbo and have an affair. My ‘depressions’ would disappear if I had an affair. An affair! I was then and I am now madly in love with Karla; the only thing right about my life was and is Karla and our children. How dare he! But he dared, and I never discussed anything more intimate than a planter’s wart with him from that millisecond on…

An affair? Go fuck yourself. (Sorry…) No wonder some people are so fucked up. Excuse my language, but if there is ever a place to use it, it’s in reference to me having an affair to get past my ‘I can’t breathe’ depression.

Once I took the plunge
into the psychiatric world
,
I should’ve taken a plunger with me.

My first psychiatrist literally creeped me out. Not a single thing that he said made any sense whatsoever. This doctor in Birkenstocks wrote me a prescription for something that would immobilize a horse and then told me that every time I felt depressed, I should “put a hard lemon candy drop in my mouth and just suck on it. But—” he continued, “if you don’t have a lemon candy, use a pebble. Any
pebble
would do.”

A pebble.
A pebble
A pebble.

As in any profession, there are people who are gifted, and there are people who really should be doing something else. I would have been better off getting advice from the guy selling Dodger Dogs in Chavez Ravine and singing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” I thought I was nutty—whoa. So it is a process and you must be patient or else the bad shrinks may have you jumping off buildings just because of their incompetence. Now that I’ve said that, I must say that the ones who were good at their jobs were actually brilliant and helped me. A lot. Everyone will find the ‘flavor’ of shrink that will suit him or her the best. But the true test is how willing you are to keep looking...

I found that I was always drawn to people who were disabled. In Los Angeles, I met with an older woman who had polio as a child and needed crutches and a strong upper body (not to mention a strong constitution) to just get into a chair in her office. I felt at home speaking to someone who wanted to get to the bottom of a problem rather than someone who wanted me to suck on a pebble or take strange drugs that made me want to jump off an ant hill with a single bound, oh, and ‘Time’s up! That will cost you… A LOT!’

Exercise is a remarkably helpful tool that keeps me from disappearing into the deepest, colorless void in the haunted, agonizing blur of the amorphous, tenebrous nebulae of rotting depression. Getting my body moving (out of bed!) and into any kind of routine, especially one that is aerobic, helps me more than any medicine I’ve ever been prescribed.

If you know your body and mind well enough, you can find certain tricks to pull you out from under the cement ceiling caving in on you. Sometimes that can come from something as simple as comfort foods. Other times, it’s sounds; music; smells… talking to someone on the phone—helping others! None of these are going to get you out of a deep depression but they can help you cope.

It’s easy to blame. It’s easy to blame loved ones. Go through the scenarios and realize, ‘Does my mate or best friend really deserve the crap I’m shoveling at them? Is it their fault that I’m depressed?’ Odds are, the answer will be ‘No.’ Try not to bite the hands that nurture you… easier said than done.

My brain searched for answers
and only came up with the fact that I had been sawed open and my heart was ‘under attack.’ I had recurring nightmares that turned into ‘daymares.’ I became dyspeptic around loved ones, often weltering when thoughts about a phantom table saw made me cover my chest as if nurturing a child. The visuals became more and more real to me until I literally thought I was going insane.

Karla and I believed (with humility), what I was going through was a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). What happens after a traumatic event is unique to everyone; there is no doubt that my symptoms were triggered by the brutality and negative result of my second surgery. PTSD symptoms shouldn’t be ignored.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

There is growing research on an effective alternative method for helping heal traumatic stress. Go to the
David Lynch Foundation
to learn more.

It wasn’t until years later,
when our daughter Lyric introduced me to Transcendental Meditation, that I found another tool to help with depression.

After learning TM Lyric had immediate, profound results: the spine and fibromyalgia pain she endured since age 16 disappeared completely within the first two weeks of meditating. She found it to be the most scientifically researched method of meditation, with hundreds of rigorous studies showing TM’s success in multiple areas of physical and mental health, including alleviating depression. Karla was on board.

My initial reaction was, “Perfect—now I’m supposed to join a cult!”

It was hard for me to consider at the time, as having an open-mind and being clinically depressed don’t necessarily hang out in the same room together.

While humanity barks, chatters, babbles, explodes, resonates its greedy thunder in a world where decibels bombard us wherever we go, there must be a place to delve inward into our own silence.

When I eventually learned the simple, effortless TM technique and actually allowed myself—gave myself that 20 minutes twice a day (Okay, still working on giving myself the time to do it twice a day. Why is it so hard to make time for ourselves to do something that actually makes us feel so much better?)—I realized its value. I come out of this 20 minutes refreshed, with more focus, clarity and creativity—and it’s great for your heart.

In discussing his book
Transcendence,
Dr. Norman Rosenthal, noted psychiatrist and former senior National Institutes of Health researcher, states, “If TM were a new drug, conferring this many benefits, it would be the biggest, multi-billion dollar blockbuster drug on the market.”

It’s not a religion, or a philosophy (or a cult!); it’s a helpful tool. (Too bad I didn’t learn it earlier…)
Visit
TM.org
to find out more
or
watch Dr. Oz
. explain the benefits.

I found (as usual) the best therapy for me
was to be
creative
. Once I ‘committed’ (this phase of life gave a whole new meaning to the word…) to a project or even an idea, suddenly I felt empowered again and excited and joyful. Also, I never wanted to work on anything where Karla wasn’t my collaborator. The idea of going to work and not sharing every moment I had left on Earth with Karla seemed absurd. When I found out she felt the same and I wasn’t cornering her into projects and passions she wasn’t interested in, I felt unstoppable. But interestingly enough, I found that my cardiac depression came and went when it wanted to—it had a schedule all its own. I could be fine walking across the room but almost like a switch, I could be deeply depressed by the time I reached the other side of the room.

I knew how to do battle with this evil shadow, but I still wanted to know why it would come and go like executives at a studio. One second I was fine, and the next second I’d be depressed and worried sick about people in another part of the world that I saw in a TV news report. So much so that I’d burst out into tears if I watched the nightly news… But then again, I thought, who wouldn’t? I’m not insane. It’s insane
not
to feel this way. Case in point: I used to feel the same when I watched the weather on the news channels in L.A. It would be a day where it was 90 degrees outside and the pollution level was so toxic (toxic to such an extent that people were being told to stay in their homes) it could damage the human lungs, yet the weatherman would say, “Another beautiful day here in sunny, Southern California.” Really—who’s insane?

People who watch the darkness that is shoved down our throats on the nightly news have probably become numb. But somehow these surgeries have tapped into my emotions and I can’t watch anyone suffer. Karla helps me with this. We talk about it… and because I write, I can express myself on the subject, even if it’s in the form of a letter to the editor of a newspaper.

So writing became even more cathartic, and in the process, I began writing of all things, a musical.

I chose to purge my demons
by putting all of my passion into
Open Heart The Musical.
Even the name is funny in a dark, perverse way. And the only way I could write this musical was predicated on two very important issues to me: good music for Karla to sing. To me, her extraordinary talents were being wasted every night she wasn’t on stage singing and performing; giving people a sonic experience they will never forget because she was one of the best singers I had ever heard and by far the best singer I had ever been on stage with—and people needed to see her comedy chops. The woman is a genius comically. It had to be funny. I wanted it to be poignant as well—but it had to be funny, funny, funny. Not indulgent.

Open Heart
became a work in progress beginning in 1999. It was something I could do, even if I was out of breath or not feeling well. I could work in private—all through the night if inspired. And seeing, visualizing the night when we would open and Karla would be giving audiences a giant dose of her talent and gifts, I would be filled with hope. (Hope—I’ll say it again and again: what an underrated emotion…)

Open Heart
had its first official read through in March of 2000 with the amazing singer Stan Brown, and gifted musician Sterling Smith on keyboards. On May 31 we had another read through/sing through for invited guests in our living room. The process was working. The show was finding itself—it became a driving force in my life.

To make some money to pay for our musical, I directed a few episodes of random shows, like
Dharma & Greg
. The cast and crew were terrific. The show-runner and I began a war that continues to this day. He’s laughing all the way to the bank and I’m content within my blood-bank and soul. To say we didn’t see eye-to-eye is an understatement. To say he would’ve pulled one of my eyeballs out and eat it for a snack is more to the point. Insanity. Success. And too much money. Again, really bad math.

Open Heart The Musical
was about to open its heart at The Tiffany Theater in Beverly Hills.
(Talented artist Moshe Elimelech, my sister Shelli’s husband, designed the poster for our show.) We had a read-through sing-through over two nights organized by our friend producer Susan Dietz who had seen the show in our living room. Peter Schneider, a producer on
Beauty and the Beast
who was leaving Disney to pursue theater, loved my music and wanted to produce and invest in a workshop of our show.

At 6:05 a.m. on September 11, the phone woke us up in Los Angeles. It was Lyric, 3,000 miles away, now a freshman at N.Y.U., saying a plane had hit the World Trade Center and she couldn’t get Val on the phone.

Valerie Silver Ellis worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 102nd floor of One World Trade Center. Lyric had been Sam and Valerie’s flower girl at age 4. We had just turned Lyric over to Sam and Val when we moved Lyric into her dorm on 14th St. She was supposed to have dinner with Val and Sam that night.

Our little girl, just eighteen, had only been at NYU for three weeks. I’ll never forget the phone conversation I had with Sam (now one of my best friends) after the attack but before the buildings crumbled. He was waiting for a phone call from Val. Because of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Sam knew exactly how long it would take for Val to get down the stairs and call to tell him everything was okay. The time limit was almost up. But even as he waited to hear from his wife, Sam tried to find Lyric, who was now bringing water to fire-fighters and emergency workers. Her instincts were to go
to
a problem, not
run from one
. Lyric grew up very quickly that moment in time.