The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fixing to die
Battle with deadly superbug upends writer’s life. He’s one of the lucky ones.
After my Personal Journey was published in February about my brush with death from C. Diff (Clostridium difficile colitis), septic shock and a giant blood clot, my health continued to improve. I started walking without a cane and graduated from physical therapy to lifting light weights in my doctor’s gym.
Unfortunately, my bad-idea gland kicked in.
I found this guy on the internet who said his Crohn’s disease – similar to the ulcerative colitis that has plagued me for 20 years – was cured by a shaman in Peru using a brew called ayahuasca, made from jungle plants. In addition to its purported healing properties, ayahuasca induces an altered state that lasts four to eight hours and includes hallucinations. Participating in ayahuasca ceremonies has become something of a tourist attraction among some travelers to Peru, but my interest was in its medicinal value.
The guy passed my name along to an organization putting together a group of sick folks for a five-week plant-medicine retreat into the Amazon jungle to work with several shamans supervised by an American doctor. I signed up and paid $4,000, plus round-trip plane tickets. What could possibly go wrong? We stayed in individual wooden cabins with bathrooms and ceiling fans in a hilltop clearing in the Amazonian cloud forest, with vast views of the Andes. Each morning, huge red, yellow and blue macaws in a tree near the dining area called out “Hola!” hoping for bits of our breakfasts. Skinny chickens skittered about, and untethered horses rubbed against the cabins to scratch their backs. All the Peruvians at the facility were friendly, kind and helpful. The shamans brought with them a beatific woman named Lourdes, who gave us therapeutic massages.
But eight of us were there because we were sick. The worst part of my disease, ulcerative colitis, is chronic diarrhea. After I started drinking some of the plant medicines — not ayahuasca, that was reserved for the ceremonies held at night — the diarrhea got worse. I met with the senior shaman and, speaking through a translator, explained my situation. He prescribed different plants, but they didn’t seem to help.
I got to a point I couldn’t choke down the salt-free food cooks prepared for us. I even gagged on our purified water. I lost 15 pounds.
Because of my condition, the shamans wouldn’t give me ayahuasca. But I attended the ceremonies anyway. We lay on mattresses in the dining area, which had a roof but was open on the sides, while the shamans chanted ancient blessings and blew the smoke of jungle tobacco on our heads. The ceremonies went on for hours. Mosquitoes feasted on us. Being on the floor for hours aggravated my osteoporosis and the five compression fractures in my spine. I went back to using the cane.
I kept getting sicker. By the time the five weeks were up, I was so sick I could barely stand. At the Lima airport, I was taken aboard the plane in a wheelchair.
When we arrived in Atlanta, I was delirious but managed to tip an airport employee to get me through customs and put me in a cab to Piedmont Hospital.
The emergency room doctor was shocked I was still conscious. I was diagnosed with sodium deficiency, dehydration, e-coli and pleisamonas shigelloides, a bacteria found in river water. I lay in the hospital four days with IVs dripping fluids, antibiotics and steroids into my veins. When I was finally released, my sister took me to my apartment in Athens on a boiling hot day. I turned on the AC and it didn’t work. I started to cry.
From his home in Philadelphia, my son found me one of the last available motel rooms in Athens that weekend. My ankles swelled like balloons. After I got home, Medicare sent therapists to help me walk again.
I’ve gradually improved. I walk without the cane again. And I’ve since had carpal tunnel and cataract surgeries. I go to Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta every eight weeks for an infusion of a biologic medicine for the colitis.
One downside to the treatment is a weakened immune system. Earlier this month I thought I might be getting a cold. Three days later, I was in the emergency room at Piedmont Athens Regional with a fever of 101.4. I was diagnosed with sepsis, a respiratory infection and an acute urinary tract infection. I went home after two days with a prescription for antibiotics, probiotics and prednisone.
My kids have insisted I see a psychiatrist, just in case my badidea gland kicks in again. I’m now meditating and avoiding the poison well of Facebook.
My ex-wife invited me to her Thanksgiving gathering in Augusta. Our son called in using FaceTime with holiday greetings from Philly. Then the doorbell rang and my ex-wife screamed with joy. Our son and his wife had FaceTimed from the driveway. They had traveled down for an all-time great prank.
Some days, despite myself, I look in the mirror and paraphrase Gene Wilder’s great line from the movie “Young Frankenstein”: “Alive. I’m alive! I’m ALIVE!”
In hindsight, maybe it was the right thing to do to spirit Eleanor “Sandy” Torrey West away from her beloved Ossabaw Island.
After all, Hurricane Matthew deluged the island in October, felling massive oak trees, ripping tiles from roofs and making impassable many of Ossabaw’s shell-encrusted byways.
West, 103 and in failing health and finances, had been removed from her island five months earlier for an assistedliving center in Savannah. Then, a few days before the storm hit Coastal Georgia, West was evacuated to Augusta.
A representative of The Ossabaw Island Foundation described Sandy as “alert and justifiably cranky, and eager to be reunited with her dog Toby” upon her post-Matthew return to Savannah.
And yet another chapter in the oh-so-fascinating life of Sandy West unfurls.
Sandy’s parents bought Ossabaw in 1924 joining other Northern industrialists who wintered on Georgia’s barrier islands. Champagne brunches, yacht races, boar hunts and square dances at homes owned by Fords, Rockefellers and Reynoldses ensued.
But it was Ossabaw’s natural charms — the moss-shrouded pathways, freshwater ponds, untrammeled beaches and 800-year-old oaks — that truly captivated Sandy. An artist, author, naturalist and philanthropist, Sandy transformed the island twice the size of Bermuda into a writer and artist’s colony.
She and her second husband, Clifford West, created The Ossabaw Foundation in 1961, pouring most of their money into a retreat where Ralph Ellison, Margaret Atwood, Annie Dillard and other creatives could work in solitude. Raucous dinners often ensued at the circa 1924, red-tiled, pink-stuccoed Spanish revival mansion, aka the Main House or Sandy’s home, which overlooks the sound.
The good times didn’t last. Sandy sold Ossabaw to the state of Georgia in 1978 with the proviso she could remain in the mansion until she died. Public access remains limited and the island’s foundation manages the buildings and cultural affairs.
Earlier this year it became clear Sandy could no longer afford to live on Ossabaw. When we published our story, “Keeper of the Island” in March, a GoFundMe account had been established to raise enough money to cover her health care and keep the lights on. About $70,000 was raised, not enough to keep Sandy at home.
She took the quick ferry ride to the mainland in early May. She hasn’t been back since. A friend says she’s doing “amazingly good” given her age, waning health and memory, not to mention her absence from the island she so loved.