Pills For Enlightenment

It would seem impossible that I could live a life without painkillers at this moment. This morning was a bad one that required one morphine pill, a Xanax and three Vicodins to get the pain to a somewhat bearable level, but I can no longer stand what these medications are doing to my spirit.

As I felt the pain battle for supremacy in my face and jaw (despite the meds), I decided to just lay on the couch at one point and give in, to not fight, to boldly tell it to get as bad as it wants to get--that I can take it.

It's always remarkably relaxing when I do this, as I suppose in these moments I can compartmentalize the pain, set it aside, and live with it instead of fighting it. But for some reason, I seem to do this only when I arrive at the point where I'm realizing it's winning handsomely, and the only way to win the war, so to speak, is to surrender the battle.

When I do this, the pain does ease up somewhat, and I wondered this morning if this tactic would be successful if I went off pain medication altogether. It seemed like such a shockingly bold move, even stupid, but the idea intrigued me.

Yet when I significantly decreased my pain meds in an experiment last week, the pain skyrocketed, and it took two days to get it down again. It's actually been pretty bad ever since.

But I literally can't stand this medication fog anymore. As I've been so isolated and sedentary for most of the past year, I joined a gym this week, and man, what an effort not only to exercise, but just to walk over there! My malaise fought me every inch of the way, and the depressing thought kept creeping in, "Why am I bothering?"

What's keeping my hope afloat, though, are the memories of more joyous times, when, despite my problems and issues, life could also feel electric and exciting, and I would be wildly filled with creative ideas that gave me more than enough fuel to execute them.

But my days are so very different now. And I have to wonder how they fit into the overall pattern of success/defeat defeat that has defined so much of my life. If everything around us is truly connected by some kind of universal web, where past, present and future are illusions of our three-dimensional world, and if I go on the assumption that I'm here on this earthly plane to learn deep truths via the gift of free choice, then what is the lesson?

Of course, my malady may be nothing more than a freak occurrence of bad luck, but for the sake of argument, if this ordeal does somehow reflect a bigger picture, what in that picture am I missing?

When I think along these lines (which always seem to effortlessly surface during these moments of surrender), it all feels so profoundly obvious to me--that of course this is all connected, you numnut, but you just don't want to go there. You don't want to face the sheer terror of the wild blue yonder before you, and instead would prefer to stay in your hovel of pain and medication, where the space is oh so small, but oh so familiar.

As I've written about before, most of my adult life was devoted to music, to being the best singer/songwriter I could be. Those were heady times indeed, but when one is so singularly focused on JUST ONE THING in life and that thing no longer exists, it's hard to feel anchored to the earth anymore, despite my other artistic endeavors.


And why was my life devoted to JUST ONE THING? Because I felt so incapable of succeeding in love relationships. Time after time, I made such poor choices in men, which had less to do with them and more to do with my low self-esteem. And let's face it...a life without love, or even the potential for love, is hardly a life at all. I dare say my fear of intimacy borders on something pathological, and I am the less for it.

Of course, now that I'm so ill, in such pain and on so many medications, I continue to feel myself unworthy of a love relationship, but of course this is just more of my bullshit. I'm aware that I'm actually quite good (for the most part) at handling extremely difficult physical conditions, and I'm also aware that no one is perfect; that we all have our proverbial crosses to bear and baggage to unload. Pain and illness does not deem me unlovable, but in my own mind, it gives me an excuse to melodramatically retreat, which is made all the easier by the fatigue created by the meds.

It's a vicious cycle indeed. Pain and fatigue keep me isolated, yet isolation keeps me away from any possibility of love, which would restore much-needed balance in my life, whether the pain was there or not.

It's certainly no easy thing to wake up with severe pain in the morning, and would be harder still to take a stab at not medicating it, but something has got to give. I've become frozen in time, remembering the person I used to be, yet only vaguely seeing the person I could become. And therein, perhaps, lies the rub.

With all previous definitions of myself shattered, who am I now, and who do I want to be? Where do I go from here? I can't see it, and this terrifies me, frankly. And with pain taking up so much real estate in my brain, it's difficult to formulate a new vision for myself or for anything...even some nutty creative endeavor.

Before all this happened, I was actually feeling okay about setting the music aside for awhile, by exploring new paths, by venturing forward full speed ahead in faith and love.

But of course, my faith was shattered, too, when pain exploded onto the scene. God not only vacated his co-pilot seat in my life; he actually hit the ejector button, leaving me to crash land in some foreign sea all on my own. I've been trying hard ever since not to drown.

And so my present is now largely defined by reruns of Criminal Minds. Nothing soothes the tortured soul, it seems, like stories of sociopathic serial killers.

I watched a preacher today during a Sunday morning TV program, and he talked about faith, about putting our troubles in God's hands. He focused mainly on the recession and the joblessness that many of his followers were no doubt experiencing, noting Bible passages that basically said to quit worrying, have faith that God will provide, and just enjoy your life.

When it comes to money and my freelance work, I can get with that. But how those parables apply to someone in chronic pain still has me stumped. Maybe they don't apply, or can't. Once again, I'm reminded of Buddhist teachings that say there will always be suffering in life; the trick is to rise above it (no matter how harsh the circumstances), relinquish your attachments, and enjoy the bliss that ensues.

But I'm told by this one Buddhist sect that I'll have to chant two to three hours a day to attain this enlightenment. Huh? What? Is this a joke? I get impatient with how long it takes to walk to my kitchen. Can't they just make a pill for it?


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Note: Watercolors are some new entries in my illustrated journal. I'm using them as inspiration to get back to my flamenco classes!




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The Taming of the Blue

It's been a little over a year since I wrote my History Repeating post about the plague that engulfed Europe in 1347. Like a number of essays on this blog, it was inspired by a show on the History Channel, which just happened to air again yesterday.

I was just as fascinated with the program as I was 13 months ago, but what was even more intriguing was my very different response to it this time around.

Last year at this time, I was in such a state of profound questioning about God, railing against life's unfairness, and feeling that I'd somehow been singled out by my creator to suffer extreme and unending pain for reasons known only to him. My intellect grappled with this daily, on the one hand clearly seeing that I was just an unfortunate victim of circumstance, but on the other, feeling some deep sense of deserving this punishment, and maybe more hopefully, feeling that this was part of some divine plan designed to teach me something profound.

In hindsight, no matter how you look at it, any response I was having was tremendously self-centered, and I say that not as a self-criticism, but as a simple, if uncomfortable, observation.

Of course, it's natural to focus entirely on oneself when physical agony sets the tone for the day, but all that grappling with profound questions has led me to a curious state of being indeed, and one that I didn't at all expect, for in all my questioning about God, the place I'm being led is not to the heavens, but back to earth, upon which I feel like I'm walking for the very first time.

I've always been somewhat of a heady character, and in fact used to joke that my body was the thing that simply carried my head around. In being a creative person absorbed in the arts, I was always writing songs or painting pictures, and when I wasn't doing that, I was pondering the after-effects of therapy in order to unravel a more happy existence. In short, my head was in some very stormy clouds nearly all of the time, and the world around me was something I witnessed but kept at a distance, as I was the star of the show, so to speak, slightly removed and certainly above the mundane world of ordinary folks.

In short, I suppose I was something of a snob, albeit a nice one, but my niceness in no way affected my ambitions to be bigger, bolder and better in nearly everything I did.

What a moron.

I can see this so clearly now, and while a little embarrassed by it, I couldn't be more thankful that this old crusty cloak is slowly disintegrating all around me, and I do have to wonder if this horrible, awful, painful ordeal has had anything to do with it.

Two weeks ago, I had yet another surgery on my jaw, and by all accounts, it seems that my attempts to rid myself of pain have failed yet again. In fact, I may have even made matters worse, as the wound and bone refuse to heal.

This landed me at a local hospital's wound center last week, where I'm on deck (if Medicare approves it) to receive treatment in a hyperbaric chamber, which will be six weeks of being locked in a pressurized glass tube three hours a day. I'm told that this will force more oxygen into my system, thus destroying all bacteria and fostering growth of new blood vessels. Apparently, my chances are 50/50 in terms of pain relief, which before might have depressed me, but now...well...I'm not sure it matters which way the wind blows.

I felt this same way just before my surgery, in fact, which was in such stark contrast to so many of the other surgeries these past five years. I used to pray so hard for a positive outcome, only to be devastated when those prayers weren't answered. In many ways, I felt exactly like the plague victims, who turned to God and their faith for relief from their terrorizing torture, only to be ignored and left to their own devices. Clearly, the god of their understanding became irrelevant when it really counted, just like my own understanding of God and faith faltered when the going got tough.

When I take a closer look, I can see now that I was asking all the wrong questions and focusing on (and praying for) all the wrong things. While it was certainly appropriate and understandable for me to rage at my fate, I can see now that this ordeal has taken me completely out of my head and landed me squarely on my feet, where I now feel the dirt and sand between my toes in ways I never have before.

What's so startling is how I now move in my world. Despite the pain, no matter where I go, I seem to laugh and talk with just about everyone, and I'm quick to help when I see someone in a jam, whether it be a mother struggling to get her baby stroller up the subway steps, or an old lady waiting in the rain at a bus stop, who I pick up and drive home. I hate to think that I didn't help in these ways before, but what I'm guessing is that I just didn't see these situations, as I was too blinded by heady concepts and my own ambition.

In a waiting room the other day, for example, I began playing with three little brothers as if I'd known them my whole life, and in short order had everyone in the room laughing with our antics. The connection was instant, strong and barrier-free. I complimented their mom and dad on their beautiful family, and was warmed by the very thought of these three little devils for the rest of the day.

This may not sound like a big deal, but I can't really remember this ever happening before. When I say I talk with and smile at everyone, I mean everyone, and this glorious, bustling city I live in provides ample opportunity to flex my new friendly and outgoing muscles. I crack wise with cops and politicians, I have coffee with artist friends at local cafes, and I thank my bus driver after every single ride.

Oddly enough, as I write this, I'm actually having a very bad day. The pain is as bad as it ever was, which often leads to combustible outbursts of tears and long periods of sleep.

In a sense, the malaise and sadness about this condition haven't changed, but what has changed is that I don't expect to not suffer anymore. When I look at the world at large, either now or in the past, great suffering certainly isn't anything new, or anything unique to me. Maybe the trick to my ultimate contentment will be to be at rest with what is and to use that as the stuff of glorious, creative absorption, which is, of course, the ultimate painkiller.

It sounds so simple, but it's quite hard for me not to define myself by my accomplishments. No wonder this pain has caused such suffering on so many levels, as it has forced me to sit still and think, to rest, to just be. For so long, I felt like my accomplishments had to be huge in order for them to matter to the world, to make a difference. I'm only beginning to see that a smile exchange with just one person can light a spark for us both that can illuminate an entire hour, or more.

I should know in a day or two if Medicare will approve the hyperbaric treatment. If that does happen, I'm not expecting much, other than some claustrophobia and maybe some nice encounters with staff, who I suspect I'll get to know quite well. Maybe there'll be some kids in the waiting room.


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Part I: Blood, Guts and SpongeBob

Part I of the Whole Story

I'm beginning to wonder what it's like NOT to suffer. I honestly can't believe that I haven't yet gone stark raving mad.

Wait...back up a bit. I actually DID go nuts in 2004 and ended up in a psychiatric facility. Oh, brother. Who'da thunk? I was SO depressed that I couldn't even walk the two blocks to St. Mary's and had the suicide hotline call an ambulance to come pick me up. You know things are bad when you can barely find the motivation to walk into the kitchen. I honestly believe there are thousands out there, maybe millions over the eons, who've killed themselves over far less, as I can assure you, I don't think an ounce of serotonin was left in my brain that day.

Things had been gearing up to this point for a number of weeks...actually months. For the 18 months or so prior to a massive internal hemorrhage in March '04, I was feeling quite saucy and slick. Yes, I battled daily abdominal pain that occasionally required Vicodin for "breakthrough pain" (maybe one pill two or three times a week), but other than that, Tylenol handled the job, and I was happy to have survived a major blood clot in my liver (portal vein thrombosis and Budd Chiari Syndrome) in September 2002 (the cause of the abdominal pain).

I was so happy, in fact, that I seemed to find enormous new meaning to my life. And the coumadin I was now taking had two remarkable effects: it eliminated my chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms that I'd been suffering with for 15 years or so, AND it significantly decreased my jaw pain that had started in 1999.

To say that I was a happy camper during this year-and-a-half window is an understatement, for never had I felt so joyous. Every day felt like a gift, and my life was expanding in new and unexpected ways. As my freelance writing was going well, I was able to upgrade to a new large art studio, and I suddenly produced a prolific output of new paintings.

I also came up with countless creative ideas, one of which was the short-lived talk show "Highball! With Mary Ann Farley" at my local bookstore.

The idea of it was to celebrate local artists and personalities, with the format of it first being a Q&A over highballs ('natch), and then the person would perform.

I thought of everything. I had local sponsors pay for a nice spread for audience members, I had the video fireplace (long before other talk show hosts stole my idea :)), and I had glamour in spades.

The idea garnered such quick attention that The Bergen Record did a Sunday feature on the first episode, and I was getting hit for "bookings" long before we even did the first show.

But then something strange began to happen with my health. The abdominal pain, which had been a daily companion for 18 months, was starting to go away as well, and I thought for sure all of my good Law of Attraction thinking was manifesting in spades.

My relationship with my "creator" felt so solid that I decided to get oral surgery on my jawbone to rid myself of any remaining infection and facial pain, and really shoot for a completely pain-free life. Not only were things looking up, but I felt somehow that I had finally arrived, that so much of the awfulness of my life was now behind me, and I was in the moment for perhaps the first time in my adulthood. All goals were short-term, and I expressed my newfound loopiness by wearing clip-on ponytails of all kinds just about every day...long, short, curly, straight. I think it's fair to say I had a grin on my face just about every day.

But then...

It was a Sunday morning and I awoke feeling very achy and thirsty, thinking I was getting a bug. But by the time the afternoon arrived, I knew I was in deep trouble, as in going to the bathroom, I discovered that my stool was absolutely jet black, a sure sign that I was bleeding internally--something I'd been warned about.

As the clot in my liver had calcified, the pressure in my stomach had caused varicose veins, and in being on coumadin, I was in constant danger in having one of them burst at any time. The tar-black stool was confirmation that the inevitable had occurred.

As I'd been in the hospital so many times up until this point, the idea of packing up a bag and walking over to St. Mary's was just plain boring, but dutifully I gathered my paperwork, my toothbrush, my journal with a few art supplies, then took my place in the emergency room.

As usual, I called my dear friend Lynda, who'd come to St. Mary's with me numerous times back in 2002, to tell her simply that I was there, and that there was no need whatsoever for her to come over and be bored with me, despite her offer, once again, to keep me company. I now wish, of course, that she had come, simply to witness the events that were just a few short hours away...events that I haven't even seen in the most grotesque movie or TV dramas of extreme emergency room scenes. It was something you'd see more in a horror movie, where you'd say, geez--what sick mind dreamed this one up?

It came up upon me quick, without notice...a sudden urge to vomit, and as I had nothing to throw up in, I quickly grabbed the liner of a garbage can, while yelling to nurses that I needed something to get sick in.

At first, it was just spitting up blood into the bag, but when the basin came and landed on my lap, I began projectile vomiting volumes of pure unadulterated blood that made the eyes of the nurses around me go wide and their faces go pale.

Unbeknowst to me at the time, I'd also aspirated a fair amount of blood back into my lungs, which had the effect of suffocation, or drowning, and I could feel my vision going black. "I'm fading," I said, "I'm fading," and I thought for sure this was it...that I was checking out for good, and I turned to a young nurse next to me and asked her point blank, "Am I going to die?"

She was way too young for such a question, and answered, "Well...um...we're going to do everything we can to...um..."

She couldn't even answer the question when I felt another surge of vomit rising to the surface, only this time they couldn't find a basin in time, which meant I projectile vomited even more blood over the side of the bed, trying to aim for the garbage can that I'd removed the liner from previously.

Again, I felt myself fading to black, which I have to say was the single scariest thing I've ever felt. To feel the life force begin to drain from your body in such a violent way is chilling, lonely and just plain awful.

I then turned to the head nurse, Nurse Betty, and again asked, "Am I going to die?"

"Not on my shift!" she yelled back, and I immediately wondered what time she clocked out.

What then ensued is something you see in a scene of ER. The bed was whisked away into another part of the emergency room, and suddenly I must have had half a dozen people surrounding me, inserting tubes into veins that, because they're so tiny, would not expand wide enough to accommodate the insertion of new, thick blood.

Ultimately, a handsome Indian doctor inserted a line into my groin, which had to be stitched on, and at last the new blood was finding its way into me.

By this time, my pal Lynda had arrived, and unbeknownst to me was told by Nurse Betty that I had lost an enormous amount of blood and was in critical condition, and that she should walk into the room with a smile on her face.

She did, but with big watery pools in her eyes, which perplexed me, as it still hadn't sunk in just how bad things were. It was only when I overheard her a few minutes later on the phone with my mother, and hearing the words "critical condition," that I knew this was bad.

Yet somehow, I knew I was going to live, and Lynda and I began joking with the various personnel helping me, especially "SpongeBob," the gay nurse, who teased me that I was "a big baby" for complaining about the unanesthetized stitching process going on in my groin.

Obviously I made it through the night, and the next morning they were able to find and clamp the popped vein in my stomach. It turns out that I'd lost 70% of my blood volume, as ultimately I'd need nine pints of blood and six units of plasma to replace all I'd lost. (I was to vomit again at 5 a.m. the next morning.)

I stayed in the hospital for a week, fighting off fevers from the new blood, and mentally preparing for the surgery I would ultimately need at Columbia Presbyterian to reduce my gastric pressure, so that this wouldn't happen again.

As bad as this all was, things were to get far, far worse.

Next up: Three months of hell, followed by my descent into stark, raving insanity.


Note: Drawings were done my first night in ICU.
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Catching Flies

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, as I've been writing the story of what happened in March 2004, when life took such a dive. I've been wanting to get it down for awhile now, just so that I don't have to tell the story anymore. If someone wants to know what happened, I want to be able to simply direct them to the blog posting, which will liberate me from having to tell such a weighty story over and over. I suppose it's a way of putting it in the past, even though it continues to play out in such painful ways.

In writing it, though, there are so many details to the story that I begin to even bore myself with it. While there's plenty of action, blood and guts, literally, it tires me to write it, so I've been carefully editing and shortening, as at the end of the day, I'm an entertainer at heart. If I'm gonna spin a tale with that much real-life drama, I've got to lighten the verbiage to capture the essence of how rapidly things declined, and how close I came to meeting my maker, with all of the harrowing details intact.

Who knows if anyone will ever read it, and who cares. I just gotta get it on the page so that I can leave it somewhere. As the World Wide Web is a fairly large place, I suspect it can handle the load.

As for how things have been the past few weeks, comparing life to a rollercoaster is an understatement. I'm working with a new chiropractor who's doing trigger point therapy--working out the knots in my face, jaw and neck that have taken years to develop.

On about two occasions, I had a couple of hours where I was completely, absolutely pain-free. There was one night that I caught myself with my mouth open in astonishment, the old "catching-flies" gape, as I felt so completely myself again. When physical pain lifts, the speed with which it becomes a memory is nothing short of shocking. Immediately, my thoughts raced towards all of the things I want to do, goals I want to accomplish, paintings I want to start. I even continued work on a song I began last year.

I was so heartened by this new turn of events that I also signed up for a one-month intensive workshop of flamenco study, where I go to class in New York every other day. The exercise has boosted my endorphins, and I've had short periods of such hope and happiness.

But in the last few days, the pain in my face lapsed back into being as bad as it ever was, and I've been popping Vicodin like candy in an effort to get the level down, not just because I don't want to suffer, but because I'm going out to dinner this weekend with my family to celebrate my 50th birthday.

Fifty. When the hell did that happen? In some, if not most, ways, I'm thrilled to say I'm younger than I've ever been. But time is marching on, and each day has a new value that hasn't existed before. Twenty years ago I was 30; in another 20, I'll be 70.

As Carly Simon once said, "I haven't got time for the pain," but it seems that pain has time for me.

Well, I can't do anything about it except accept it, hard as that is. When they say we "practice" acceptance, that's exactly what it is--like practicing the piano.

I need to get better at it.


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