My journey to healing

Ah-choo! A single sneeze, and excruciating pain riddled my body. I tried to shift slightly in my chair and succumbed to a harrowing spasm that shot up from my right hip, seared into my shoulder and sent waves of agony to my fingertips. When it finally stopped, I looked around. There was no one in my section of the busy hair salon. I gently turned my head, then closed my eyes. Consciously, I practiced lengthening each breath until the pain passed from my body. At that moment, I had no idea that this incident would change my life forever.

I started going in for regular treatments with a chiropractor, but was dismayed to find, even after two weeks, that the pain I’d felt after the sneeze had only become more intense. One night I laid on the carpeted floor at my downtown office to ease my body into some simple stretches and was shocked: My right foot refused to lift off the floor. Early the next morning, I saw my doctor. Diagnosis: two herniated discs pinching the sciatic nerve. After another week of constant pain, a nurse practitioner prescribed Vicodin. It did nothing. I stopped taking it. I stopped going to physical therapy, too. I could barely walk and spent most days lying on the floor of my bedroom trying to sleep away the suffering.

My pain escalated until, finally, it inspired hallucinations. I slept in small increments, jolted awake every few hours tortured by spasms. “Where did this pain come from?” I asked myself, too bewildered by the lack of sleep to remember. But my mind, ever obedient, would work to concoct an answer: “Ah,” I would think to myself, “I was hit by a truck and just forgot. That’s why I’m in such pain.”

Other times I would wake up and imagine that the sheets around my right hip, leg and foot were covered with blood. I would turn on the light and be startled by the sparkling clean sheets. I had not been hit by a truck, nor had I been bleeding. But my mind could not comprehend such consistent, intense suffering, so it manufactured possible reasons for the damage.

When the pain first began, I prayed about it and wrote diligently in my journal, examining my thoughts and the possible symbolism of the experience. I began now to pray, fervently, to be free of the pain or to have the courage to carry it. One Saturday afternoon, I dreamed that I was lying on a long, narrow table that was covered with a cloth of fine white cotton. Angels surrounded me, and the Virgin Mary was performing a ceremony, laying her hands on me. Light streamed from her hands into my body, and I could feel my misery lifting.

I was referred to a neurosurgeon, a well-dressed, methodical man with a carefully clipped gray beard and a charming smile. He had me take steroids for a time to see if that would reduce the pain. But soon it became clear that surgery was my best hope.

On the morning I was scheduled for the operation, I was calm, completely at ease. Going to the hospital would be as simple as going to work or church or to the movies, I thought. There was no apprehension welling inside me. I knelt for prayer and meditation, asking for things to go well. I realized that I wanted Eucharist before my surgery. I called my church. No one would be in until after 9 a.m., a recording said. I had to be at the hospital at 9:15. I called my friend Trisha and explained my dilemma, adding, “I know that you have some pull with the priests. Could you get someone to give me communion?”

“I’m a Eucharistic minister,” she said. “I have keys to the church. I’ll meet you there in 10 minutes.”

My friend Denise drove me to St. Francis Church, which was across a park from the hospital. Trisha ran toward us; “Don’t get out of the car!” she yelled. I briefly wondered if she would administer Eucharist from the street as I lay reclined in Denise’s sedan. But Trisha reached in through the window and handed me a gold compact. The communion wafer was nestled inside.

“Return it when you can,” she called and ran back to her car.

Denise and I waited in the hospital lobby. The intake clerk was dressed in a black cocktail dress with black heels. It looked like something you’d wear to a classy funeral, I thought. She verified my personal information.

“I see that you’re Catholic,” she said. “It says I’m Catholic? How does it know that? I never filled out any form specifying my religion,” I said.

We were dismissed and directed onward. After some waiting, I was shown to a room the size of a confessional to change into a hospital gown and bag my clothing. While I was waiting, I remembered the Eucharist and offered it to myself. After some time, a nurse knocked on the door. I exited to be weighed. “Have you had anything to eat?” she asked.

“No,” I reply, slightly amazed that I’d managed to be so energetic without food. The nurse invited me to return to the small room. I sat for a moment, content. The sun filtered through a small window far above me. Suddenly, I bolted to my feet and out the door. “I did have something to eat,” I confessed to the nurse. “I had the body of Christ!”

“What?”

“I had Eucharist. This morning. Just a little while ago. I forgot.”

“OK, go back to the room and wait,” she said angrily. “You weren’t supposed to eat or drink anything! We may have to cancel the surgery. I’m going to have to find your anesthesiologist. It will be up to him if you have surgery today or not.”

I returned to the tiny cell. There was a long mirror in it, and I stood to stare at myself. I couldn’t believe that I solemnly received communion without thinking of the consequences. Suddenly, a certainty settled over me.

I knew the surgery would go forward. This was the perfect day for it. I wanted it to happen. Whenever I find myself waiting, whether it is in a line as I wait for a bank teller or at the grocery checkout counter or in traffic, I pray. Simple prayers of gratitude that acknowledge the blessings inherent in every day. I end these silent prayers with the request that if anyone else has a prayer that needs support, add my prayer to their prayer. As I waited for the nurse to return, I relaxed into conversation with God.

The door opened. It was the nurse. “We talked to your anesthesiologist. He said he thinks everyone should have Eucharist before surgery. He asked if you had holy wine, too, and said that everyone should have a little holy wine before surgery.” “No wine,” I said, laughing.

A man wearing an African-print hat and scrubs arrived to wheel me into surgery. I waved to the blur of faces. “I don’t have my glasses or contact lenses,” I told the orderly. “Tell me if there’s anyone cute. I’m single.”

“OK,” he said gleefully, “but so far they’re all ugly.”

As we passed the nurses’ station, I raised my hand-waving to an art. “This is my royal wave,” I announced, “and this, my beauty queen wave.”

“Very good. Very good,” the orderly laughed. “Now this,” I said, “is how the Pope waves. Oops! I hope there aren’t any Catholics who are easily offended and plan to be operating on me.”

We laughed harder. He settled me in the pre-op room. “Would you like a warm blanket?” he asked. He placed a couple of blankets in a dryer, and we chatted as they heated. He draped them over me and tenderly tucked me in. He prepared to leave when another woman in the pre-op room asked if she could have a warm blanket, too. Then another. And another. The opportunity for nurturing was as infectious as the silliness I had engaged in earlier. I noticed how each request was filled with kindness.

My neurosurgeon came by to check on me. After he left, a woman called out, “Joey! What are you doing here?” It was my friend Robin, who, after several years of church ministry, had returned to her work as an emergency room nurse. She told me about a patient she had that morning. “It didn’t seem like he was going to make it,” she said. “He was so young, a cancer patient. I put on my Ave Maria CD and began to pray incessantly over him. He pulled through!” The Ave Maria! “Oh, Robin, I would love to have the Ave Maria playing while I am in surgery,” I said.

“No problem. I’ll go get the CD and put it in your operating room.”

Robin left, and my anesthesiologist came by to introduce himself. After he left, I began my prayers again. Then, spontaneously, in my mind’s eye, I saw my parents in their youth. Then me as an infant. A flood of faces followed, the faces of everyone I ever loved or ever thought I hated. I loved them all. I had such gratitude for all that had been given to me. I was grateful, too, for the privilege of receiving the benefit of the years of study and dedication of the healers in whose hands I now rested. It was clear to me: This is heaven. This planet is heaven. Everything we could ever imagine is here and being given to us. I had been given everything. My life was complete. Tears poured from my eyes, but I did not sob. My heart soared in perfect joy.

“We got a crier here,” I heard a voice say loudly. I opened my eyes. Between the tears and my nearsightedness, all I could see was a blur. It looked like a nurse was speaking to someone I couldn’t see down the corridor. Suddenly she and another nurse were at the foot of my gurney.

“What’s wrong?” one asked.

“Nothing. I’m happy.”

“You’re happy? You’re crying because you’re happy?”

“Yes. I feel so blessed to be here. Everyone is so nice. Everything is so wonderful. This is heaven,” I burbled.

The two nurses looked at each other. One checked my chart while the other checked my I.V. “They haven’t started her on meds yet,” one nurse said to the other. They left, shaking their heads.

Robin returned. “I put the CD in your operating room,” she said. Then she looked into my eyes and took my hand. “You will heal perfectly. Remember, you are the body of Christ.” I was so astonished that I was silent. The tears streaming down my face spoke for me. I had not told Robin about the Eucharist episode that day.

A beefy young nurse wheeled me into the operating room. It was like being wheeled into a cloud. The gleaming white room resounded with the “Ave Maria.” It was like choruses of unseen angels embracing me. Several sets of strong hands lifted me on to the operating table. Someone else took my hand and I heard, “You are safe and loved. You are welcome here. You will heal perfectly.”

My neurosurgeon visited me early the next day. He stood at the side of the bed near my feet. “When I opened your back,” he said, “in addition to the disc material, there were bits of broken bone and cartilage. I know that you were praying for a miracle …”

“Yeah, the resurrection of my right foot,” I interrupted, laughing.

He stared at me for a moment.

“Joey,” he said, “the miracle was that you could walk at all. The damage was such that you should not have been able to walk. But if you could walk, the pain should have been so great that it should have stopped you.”

He looked away, and then said quietly, “The miracle was that you could walk at all.” His words hung in the air; time stopped in the instant he ended his sentence.

I realized that my prayers had been answered.

As a child, I longed to be good enough to go to heaven. Yet here I was all along. This planet is heaven. Everything we could ever want or imagine is here, right here.

Joey Garcia writes a weekly column (Ask Joey) for the News & Review. She also publishes a magazine, Sustenance, which previously ran a version of this story.