On a fateful Sunday morning in 1992, I was distracted by a
soiled area on my bathroom floor and decided to clean it before stepping into
the shower. Gathering my cleaning
supplies, which were housed in the cabinet beneath the sink, I lowered to my
hands and knees, and as I reached forward to swipe the dirty spot, I lost my
balance. As my backside was on its
inexorable course to making full contact with the hard tile floor, my tailbone
struck the raised heel of my right foot.
Fire exploded in my backside. I
grabbed the edge of the bathtub to steady my reeling brain that was threatening
to go black from the pain, and then all I could do was to lower to the floor,
contract into a fetal position and lie on the cold tile until the throbbing lessened
enough to pull myself to the toilet. Once seated, I noticed that the designated
heel was covered with blood. At first, I
thought that it was a gash in my foot, but further investigation revealed a
different source. I was aghast to find
that the blood had come from my backside.
Discomfort
in my tailbone was familiar to me. Actually,
I had broken it thirty-three years earlier.
In preparation for a Saturday night date, I was soaking in
the bathtub, aromatic bubbles up to my neck and my skin drinking in the
generous dollops of bath oil I had added to the water. The telephone rang. This was long before cellphones. Concerned that it might be my boyfriend
calling me for some urgent reason, I jumped out of the bathtub, and proceeded at a quick
pace to get to the nearest phone. Both
of my oily feet slipped out from under me on the bare tile of the floor, and I
came down with my full weight on my backside and broke my tailbone, an injury that was a source of chronic pain for the ensuing
five years.
For a
couple of months prior to the second incident in the bathroom, I had been experiencing
some discomfort in my tailbone again, and, of course, I dismissed it as just a
recurrence of the old injury. I had
decided that having it looked at could wait until my yearly gynecological exam,
several months hence. But the pain grew
worse, the blood didn’t go away and I had begun to experience bouts of severe
diarrhea. Subsequent to several
examinations and tests, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, and for the
next five years, it was treated as such.
All of
the treatments were useless, and after second opinions, third opinions, fourth
opinions, and copious other tests, it was decided that it was, in fact, Crohns
Disease instead, a diagnosis confirmed by one of the foremost Colitis/Crohns
specialists in the world, a doctor whose practice is at the Cleveland
Clinic. In the interim, steroids were my
steady diet—it was the only thing that somewhat reduced the flares of the
almost constant diarrhea.
Three
years more and additional treatments were the result, including ineffectual infusions
of Remicade, as well as chemotherapy medications. As my body blew up to almost twice its
former size from the steroids, and I grew weaker from the diarrhea, and I fought
constant anemia from the bleeding, my life diminished concurrently. It was as if my former life as a socially
active and successful interior designer and artist was petering out
slowly. My life had reduced to a
well-worn path in the carpeting between my bed and my bathroom. Not even sleep was my savior because I was up
half of the night, every night, in the race to the bathroom, races that I
didn’t always win.
As I
reach back into my memory, the only term that comes to mind germane to my
emotional state is “emptiness.” I guess
it stands to reason that when a person is dealing with such overwhelming
physical difficulties that the mind switches its resources to the body and away
from the mind. But I have another, more
philosophical, explanation of my mind’s emptiness. I believe that Spirit was erasing my mind
like a master teacher erasing a blackboard in preparation for a new script for
me to follow.
That
script turned into a full-bodied screenplay in my mind the morning of August
10, 2000, a morning after a very bad night and another interminable day of bathroom
trips and barrenness before me. That
morning, I went to the bathroom (what is it with me and bathrooms?), got into
the shower, and while standing under the spray, the story of my first book, Jesus
Gandhi Oma Mae Adams flowed over me as if the words were contained within
the molecules of the water. I returned
to my bed with notebook and pen in hand, and started to write. For the following four years, the book was
the center, as well as the liberator, of my life. I recruited my cousin, Debra Shiveley Welch
to work on a portion of the book with me.
To that point, we had been mere dabblers at writing, and taking on a book
was a new experience for both of us. To
our delight, it was an Amazon best-seller upon its release.
The irony of the entire affair is
that if I hadn’t been sick and living as a shut-in, I wouldn’t have had the
time, or the inclination, to write. In
this way, my illness was advantageous to my new work. I believe that Spirit arranged all of it to
get me out of my own way and onto the path for which my time on Earth was
intended all along. I accept as my truth
that Spirit grabbed hold of me by my tailbone and literally pushed me to my
knees to make me wake up to my real life.
Although major surgery in 2001 restored my quality of life, I have never
regained my full vitality, which means that I have to keep a lighter work
schedule as an interior designer, a favorable turn of events that not only
gives me plenty of time to write, but also to do artwork. As this holiday season approaches, I feel deep
gratitude for the trials in my life because I believe that all of them happened
for a reason, a reason that culminated in my finding independent authenticity, meaningful
purpose and dignity of a kind that would have eluded me otherwise. I also have a profound feeling now that I am
fulfilling my destiny.
Spanning this holiday season when
we are reminded that a major part of its reason is to count our blessings, three
of my good friends, who are fellow writers, have accepted my invitation to tell
you their gratitude stories on this blog.
Like me, all of them experienced illnesses that sculpted new and
wonderful lives for them. I hope you will
visit me again next week to discover the moving story of Vancouver author,
Karen Magill.
Jesus Gandhi Oma Mae Adams in paperback and
eBook is at http://www.amazon.com/Linda-Lee-Greene/e/B00864OVWA. The paperback
version is also sold on barnes&noble.com.
To read excerpts of my current and future books, please log onto www.booksbylindaleegreene.gallery-llgreene.com.
To view an exhibition of some of my artwork, I invite you to log onto www.gallery-llgreene.com.
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