I left you, dear reader, having come home at last after a crisis of aphasia in one - good - hospital, and after two and a half days of abject misery, and soul-searing pain, in another, painful, hospital.
I was beyond joyful to sink onto the red couch at home in Brooklyn, where I would recover; to watch the good man who saw me through that catastrophe clearing the obstacles from the floor, intent as if he was sweeping mines from a minefield; to smile at the dog who looks like a fluffy brown Muppet, who was wriggling with delight and smiling back at me.
There were some dramas in those early days. I was still on big drugs - taking opioid-based painkillers every eight hours or so - and swooning into the blissful not-caring whirlpool provided to my exhausted nervous system by that set of chemicals. "I really hope I don't get addicted to these," I remember thinking briefly, before sliding once again into the warm bath of delicious forgetfulness that eased the acute pain at my incision site.
When I ran out of the painkillers we had from the hospital, we faced a scary situation. On the very first day I was home, we found that we could not get a refill of the opiate-based painkillers in our low-income Brooklyn neighborhood - at all. The local CVS claimed that they did not have any, and could not get any. Full stop. It was like trying to secure something essential in 1983 in Moscow.
Brian called around and learned that other administrative hurdles were being presented to him by other pharmacies. We heard from a knowledgeable local source that pharmacies in our area often claim to be out of opiates, or to be unable to provide them, so that they won't get robbed - a sad piece of information on many levels.
Desperately, we reached out to my surgeon's team at the wonderful Hospital for Special Surgery (I think it is fine to name them at this point as I have nothing but good things to say about them): a smart, proactive staffer called the pharmacy, warning about consequences if they refused fill my prescription; and my painkillers were secured. Without that advocacy I don't know what we would have done. Once again, it seemed that a patient needed extra support or expert intervention in order just to make it intact through the medical system, and its secondary industries.
Then there was the healing. I won't say the first week was easy. I'd been sent home from the second, horrific hospital (okay, yes, that was Weill Cornell in Manhattan, please don't sue me) with few instructions. There was no special information given to me as I was released, about diet; about any lifestyle changes I should make; about anything I should do or avoid doing in seeking to recover from a very scary, very serious episode.
There were some directions: I was to go immediately to an ER, the nice, tired, masked male doctor told Brian and me, if I couldn't form words again, or if I had an unusual headache, vision disturbances, or immobility in one side of my body.
Okay.
My confusion and fear, upon getting home, were tempered by a consultation with the doctor whom I trust the most with my wellbeing, the legendary Dr Henry Ealy of Energetic Health Institute. He looked at my test results in the digital portal provided by Weill Cornell. Dr Ealy reassured me that aphasia such as the kind I had experienced, can happen with low sodium levels caused by surgery. His focus, as I understand his approach, was on making sure that my blood would circulate well and not thicken or clot; that my metabolism would work optimally, processing toxins efficiently; and that my cellular health would improve. I'd always had low blood pressure and low cholesterol, so I had never worried about my heart or about circulatory issues, but my episode, I imagine, made it wise to err on the side of boosting my circulatory health. Dr Ealy also wanted to strengthen my liver, which I confess I had neglected - "no alcohol for now", he said - and he wanted to raise my very low cholesterol levels. "Butter, meat, coconut oil," he said. "Organic berry smoothies," said Dr Ealy.
As always, I felt hopeful and calm when Dr Ealy told me exactly what to do to recover. Just as there can be medical curses, there can be medical verbal prompts for healing.
About two days after I was home from the hospital, I had an urgent work obligation - to fill out a series of NDAs, which are standard business forms. I had the very scary experience of being unable to put several email addresses correctly into this simple form. I would get the first name wrong, even as I was staring at it on another screen; or I would get the last name wrong; or I would get the domain extensions (.org or.com) wrong. My patient podcast producer stood by on the phone as I mangled email after email in NDA after NDA. He did not express the alarm he must have been feeling, though he finally politely took over the task, and I gratefully let him.
But I was terrified. Was I going to lose my cognition again, perhaps forever ? I could feel my brain suffer as I tried to understand the emails at which I was staring; I could feel a sense of rawness in its processing, like rust in the gears, as I sought uselessly to concentrate.
Dr Ealy understood exactly what was happening, thank God. It was not another "episode." My brain, he explained, was still in a photosensitive state. I needed to go into my computer settings and switch the harsh blue light of a normal screen, to the setting "Night Shift." Doing so cast a pleasant reddish shade over my screen - one I still have on to this day - and this immediately calmed my brain, and allowed me to process digital information painlessly and correctly.
Dr Ealy also "prescribed" a detailed set of supplements. Vitamin C. A tasty, lemonade-like electrolyte booster, probably to balance my sodium levels. Actual chlorophyll, which I applied in a dropper into the dissolved yellow electrolyte powder. The drops swirl into the yellow beverage like an essence of organic life - deep green plumes, separating into little fragments, like the very souls of plants. There is a turmeric tonic in a similar dropper, for detoxification; it is anti-inflammatory, and provides circulatory support. There is a supplement for liver health.
In the past, Dr Ealy has also prescribed prayer.
I knew from interviews with alternative health pioneers, that the sun, too, was healing - that it literally charges one's mitochondria, stimulating mitochondial function. So I added to my routine, an hour or two a day of lying in the sun, on the roof of our apartment building. I would bask in sunshine, if there was any, ideally at sunrise, if I was up that early, or more regularly, at sunset. (The downside of this basking at sunset was that I saw and recorded evening by evening on social media, how consistently sunset is blocked with plane emissions - in just that part of the sky. What magic does sunset actually hold ? Who is trying to block its beneficence, and why ? Perhaps sunset's proven healing powers hold some answers to these questions).
Sunlight, as a potent source of healing, has been understood for millennia, before our "modern" era of medicine forgot so much about it. Its healing effects even have a name: "Heliotherapy". In "Keeping Your Sunny Side Up: How Sunlight affects Health and Well-Being", by Stephen J Genuis, published in Canadian Family Physican, 2006, the monthly peer-reviewed publication of the College of Family Physicans of Canada, sunlight or its absence are factors in a number of serious medical conditions including cancers, bone weakness, autoimmune conditions and hormonal issues:
"Through the centuries, long before the discovery and isolation of serotonin, many health practitioners recognized that patients who spent time in the sun felt better. As a result, sunbaths and hothouses have long been used to restore health. Around 400 BC, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, routinely prescribed sunbaths as part of his management of a variety of maladies. In his health facility on the island of Cos, he had a large solarium that exposed patients to maximal amounts of sunlight as part of their therapy. The Roman philosopher Aulus Cornelius Celsus (25 BC to 50 AD) recommended that sufferers of melancholy live in spaces full of light. In 1863 Florence Nightingale appealed to hospital designers to include wards that were brightly lit by natural sunlight. Recent research also confirms that sunshine is not an incidental bystander; it is a major determinant of human health.
[...] diverse health conditions are affected by sunlight. For example, one study found that postoperative patients in sunny rooms experienced less stress and pain and used fewer analgesics than their counterparts in dimly lit rooms. 6 Various skin conditions, including psoriasis and pityriasis rosea, are improved by regular exposure to the sun. 7 Receiving the most attention, however, is the sun's effect on health through production of vitamin D.
The sun's ultraviolet rays penetrate the skin, and, through a local chemical reaction followed by systemic absorption and subsequent metabolism, a prohormone called 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin is eventually converted into circulating vitamin D. Recent epidemiologic data have identified hypovitaminosis D as a very common deficiency in first-world nations, 8- 11 likely the result of indoor living. Although a detailed understanding of nutrients and vitamins is not a prominent part of most medical school curricula, 12, 13 vitamin D deficiency was recently shown to have a substantial role in many diseases, including various cancers, 14- 19 osteoporosis, 9 hormonal problems, 20 and certain autoimmune disorders.14,21-23..."
I had been told by various health pioneers that sunning one's thighs and abdomen was critical for this "recharging" (though, as I think I told you, at first I thought this had been a joke; it wasn't). So I wore summer clothes that allowed me modestly enough to accomplish this, at least when I had the rooftop to myself.
As I rested in the sunshine, I would reflect on the sharp contrast between the tired, well-intending, masked male doctor at Weill Cornell, and the smiling Dr Ealy, always brimming with vitality and compassion. I'd reflect on the contrasts between the two systems. The pale, masked doctor in the allopathic system had let me go with instructions only about what to do if I had a stroke in the future. That is, if in the future I got to a point of being already messed up, damaged, in serious physical trouble, I knew what to do - rush to the ER. In contrast - but really, the biggest contrast imaginable in the human condition -- Dr Ealy was assessing what had happened to me, was looking at my metabolic panel of tests, and was overhauling my entire system, with nutrition, with supplements, even with an adjustment in my use of technology - to keep me healthy in ways that perhaps needed shoring up, so that I would not have a substantial risk of having a stroke in the future.
I marveled that something as basic and important to someone who has just had a brain episode, as switching settings on a computer to "Night Shift", let alone listing the importance to her of electrolyte drinks and organic berries, or of improving her circulatory health, was not even on the agenda, when a neuro ICU patient was released from a respected allopathic hospital.
These are not two different takes on healing, with significant overlap. These are two different conceptual worlds, in which "healing" has completely different meanings.
So now dear reader - to the outcome. I was uncomfortable and slow and heavily drugged for one week. The second week, I no longer needed painkillers. I did not even need aspirin. I was less uncomfortable, and I began to take walks with a cane - a cool cane, that belonged to my late father; it has a faux-ivory carved wolf's head as the handle (my dad was theatrical). First I was able to go only halfway around the block; then I could walk fully around the block. Then I was able to walk with the cane to the little cafe a few blocks away where we are members of an inexpensive "coffee club". I'd have a double latte every morning, brought to me by lovely, bright young women with tattoos, working as baristas, but who were also likely to be playwrights or photographers. I'd sit, my cane against the chaise, in the cafe's back garden, listening to birdsong and to distant traffic, and to the murmurs of conversation between local hipsters.
Then - I was able to walk right into Prospect Park with a loved one, about a mile or two, and reach a bench, and have a chat, while looking at the swans and at the paddle boats on the lake.
Every day, I went further and I hurt less. I could walk ! I was no longer limping ! My physical asymmetry - the spinal curve, the uneven leg lengths - that I had long accepted as being just part of how God made me - was gone!
I marveled at the miracle of walking. Being made physically even by my surgeon led me to be able to walk like anyone, which activity seemed incredible to me.
For years I'd been struggling in my gait, without even fully realizing how hard I'd had to work to compensate for my, well, crookedness. Now I could just walk ! It seemed a miracle of engineering, the bipedal human body walking. The weight shifting smoothly from one leg to the next, the effortless rotation of one hip and then the next hip, the feet shifting forward instinctively, and the whole being aligned, upright, progressing without falling - it was all truly amazing.
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The third week, we went to the wedding of friends of ours.
There I had a complete recovery I literally cannot explain.
June 2 was my surgery; June 3-5, my ICU stay. June 18-21 was our friends' wedding.
The wedding was in Martha's Vineyard, a storied location that already held a great deal of meaning for me, both positive and negative.
I'd visited there as a young mother with my first husband and with our then-toddler; as a single woman, I'd sailed there every summer for six years, alongside a man, whom I will call A., who had, not very long ago, passed away fairly young. A had been a close friend of the couple who were to marry that weekend. During our relationship, A. had caused me both happiness and great pain - pain that had had no closure in his lifetime.
And now I had the joy of returning with, and showing the island to, Brian, the love of my life.
It was healing for me emotionally, to return to the many haunts that held such memories for me, both bright and dark. As I shared smoked whitefish at Larson's with Brian while we sat on lobster traps, looking at the boats in Menemsha harbor; or as we enjoyed the taffy scents and steaming hot dogs and gingerbread-fronted Victorian cottages painted ice-cream colors at Oak Bluffs; or even as we loaded our cart at a local supermarket with packets of chicken to contribute to our friends' barbecue - somehow I healed.
The present circled back over the middle of my life, the recent past, and then the present circled again over the distant past.
When Brian and I were at the setting where our friends' wedding was to take place, a home at which A. had been omnipresent in his lifetime, I had walked down, with a group of old friends, to a rough column of heavy stones that a stonemason had assembled in the shape of a man, in memory of A.
The others each put a small round stone, taken from the ground, on one of the edges of the statue - a ledge at the height that a man's shoulder would be. This placing of a small pile of stones at a memorial site, is a Jewish tradition in remembering the dead.
The statue, made of larger, heavy, hewn stones, was just about exactly the height that A. had been.
I too bent down, and picked up a small, smooth stone. Though the other stones were colored in greys and greyish-yellows, this stone was a deep oxblood color, and veined with white. It was just the right one, somehow.
I put it, too, on the ledge which was at the height of A's shoulder.
As I did so, something passed right through me; an energy field, unmistakably his, like a quiet swarm of bees, walked right through me.
It seemed that we forgave one another.
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Later that night, there was a DJ and a dance floor, and I wanted to dance. I was so ready to dance, indeed, bopping around like a child, that Brian had to remind me that my doctor would not be okay with my dancing yet. "Let her dance!" someone yelled. We had to explain that I had recently had surgery. But I was dancing in my heart.
The next day, I was ready to walk without a cane. Somehow I walked all over the sloping green hills, all the way to Penobscot beach. I walked painlessly, easily, along the sand. I sat down painlessly and looked at the waves. I remembered the men, when they were younger - when one of them was still alive - dropping anchor from their boat, and diving into the green-grey waters, swimming to that shore; and emerging laughing.
Somehow I got up from the sand, that formerly impossible maneuver, without help. I climbed over dunes without help. Without help, without a cane, as if I could walk forever, I walked the couple of miles back to the celebration.
I watched my friends get married, and the heavens seemed to open over them; over us; as if true love were a palpable blessing dropped from a real celestial realm, to fall right onto our heads like warm rain; to fill our hands; to overflow.
True love embraced us, surrounded us all.
At breakfast the next morning, I was sitting with an old friend - a producer who is down-to-earth, secular, and matter-of-fact. To my knowledge, he does not have a mystical bent of any kind.
We were chatting quietly, both of us gazing idly toward a ruined stone building on the property, alongside which a table had been set, where food had been laid out.
A crowd of people was milling around the stone ruin, chatting, sipping coffee, hovering over the table of pastries, rolls and jams; or simply enjoying the sunshine. Brian was somewhere in that area as well.
The groom, looking joyful, appeared in the crowd, and started to walk down the hill. Both of us, my table-mate and I, continued looking in that direction.
Suddenly the groom was no longer visible.
The dead man emerged from the crowd; but he was not dead.
A. was present, looking more alive than ever. He appeared to be younger than when I had known him; slimmer, and healthier; indeed, he was glowing with health. His fair hair was parted on the side, as if in a style from earlier than the period in which I had known him. He walked down the slope of the hill, smiling broadly; joyfully supervising the festive activity. He was gesturing, as if pointing out, perhaps, where a tray should be placed, the kind of thing he often did at such gatherings, during his life on earth.
He was wearing a clean white shirt of very soft material, and clean khakis. He was not a translucent apparition, but a solid vision, it seemed, made of spirit. A. was fully present.
I wasn't scared. I was definitely startled. I thought, Is this a hologram?
Very slowly, my extremely practical table-mate asked, "Are you seeing what I am seeing?"
"Do you mean...."
"That A. just showed up..." he said
"Right over there?" I said, gesturing.
"Yes," he said solemnly.
We confirmed, calmly, that we were both witnessing the exact same thing.
Then when it all dissolved, a few long minutes later, we both independently confirmed that a return to the "normal" scene, without A., had taken place as well.
I wasn't shaken. It seemed very natural, if quite surprising.
Of course, somehow, A. would be there.
Late that afternoon, Brian and I got back to our little hotel room in Menemsha. We were both exhausted, and wanted to rest before the evening's activities would begin.
As he climbed into bed, he said, "Does A. have a brother?
I saw someone who looked just like him, standing by the stone ruin."
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Brian and I drove home, and it was June 22 - just twenty days after my surgery. I can't explain what happened then in simply physical terms, unless all of this is normal and bodies are just miraculous.
All my pain was simply gone, and it did not return. I could walk forever, it seemed - I had to stop myself, as I was directed not to over-exert; I could climb up and down steps effortlessly, march in place, do the bridges and partial squats my physical therapist assigned me - all with perfect comfort. My muscles and nerves and even my bones, that had been severed not three weeks before, all somehow knitted so rapidly that they all recovered their functions and sensation.
What had been an ugly, dark incision, closed completely, and healed over like magic, fading into the shade of the rest of my skin.
I did not even, do not even, understand the physics of how I could heal so rapidly.
My brain seems to have completely recovered - I have had no more scary episodes. I am working at full throttle. Now we are in Massachusetts, taking a break from the city, and I am walking, swimming, lounging again in the sun; and as soon as Fedex brings the oar that I bought from a sporting goods store for the folding kayak we have here, we'll go kayaking.
Every day I drink my strange electrolyte concoction; I take my chlorophyll, my turmeric tonic, my Vitamin C. In my tradition, we fear celebrating good fortune too loudly, as we fear attracting misfortune by doing so - but I have to risk going against that tradition to share with you that I feel overwhelmingly blessed with boundless energy and a sense of wellbeing, and to explore, in case it is helpful to you too, the reasons why that crazy-complete recovery might have come about.
What is it ? What did it?
Is it Dr Ealy's profound insight about human biological systems, and his electrolyte drinks, and his dark green and dark brown droppers of soothing liquids?
Is it "heliotherapy", that forgotten medical power of the sun?
Is it the emotional healing of laying the restless ghosts of the past to rest; and of bringing the love of my life for the first time into what had been a fraught and painful, but also a special, place?
Is it one more strange piece of evidence, right in front of my face this time, that we last forever, that we are far more than our physical bodies, and that death does not really exist?
Is it the skill of my surgeon, and the body's normal recovery process?
Is it all of this?
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I have been very ill, ill to near-death, or very broken; and recovered in extraordinary ways, very quickly; three times in just four years.
What does all that mean?
Maybe my crazily complete and speedy healing, over and over again, three times as in a fairy tale - is also due to one thing more;
Which I will share with you, dear friend, with love,
In my next essay.