Warrior Pose (27 page)

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 desperate. 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.

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

C
HRONIC 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 decides 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.