After a debilitating series of falls and three spinal surgeries made it impossible for me to continue my rheumatology practice, I retreated to my bed, and spent several years in a haze of pain, narcotics, and depression, living from dose to dose of painkillers. Every few months I’d get an epidural nerve block, and that would bring the pain level down for a while, until it went back up. During those years of taking OxyContin, Norco, Percocet, whatever my pain management specialist prescribed, I wouldn’t have minded dying, and at times I would have welcomed it. Only my love for my family kept me from allowing my mind go to a place where I might consider what method to employ. As I’m writing this I think – wow, I could have ended this any month I chose – when I had full bottles – but I couldn’t, I love my kids too much to make suicide their legacy. (Sorry about the depression part, kids – couldn’t help that one…)

I lived in a cloud of pain, and could not even stand at my kitchen counter to prepare a meal – I had to learn to sit in a way that my back was entirely supported, (i.e. reclining), do all the prep on trays in my lap, and take breaks when the pain got bad – or I would literally pass out from the pain…

Through this haze of pain and opiates, something in me kept saying: “you have to get up and go plant a garden!” If you think I didn’t fight that ridiculous voice that kept insisting that I go garden, then you don’t know how stubborn I am. (You might get an idea, if you read on!) How the hell was I going to clear the grass and the weeds from that huge (or so it seemed at the time), overgrown garden bed, when I couldn’t even stand in my own kitchen to prepare a meal? Still, that voice refused to be silenced … and I guess it started me dreaming, and once you start dreaming, well – miracles happen.

The rolling garden stool

I started thinking that if I could sit and cook, then I might also be able to garden sitting down! I remembered I had a little rolling gardening stool, and one day, when the pull was too strong to fight, I strapped on my $500.00 back brace over my best ice pack, I dusted off my gardening stool, and I surprised myself! Before I knew it I had cleared off the weeds (even they were mostly dead!), and I had some space to plant, and to dream…

The first garden bed

I believe that’s one of the thing a garden does, it gets you dreaming, and hoping, and that kind of stuff tends to spill over… Little successes, the first flowers you grow from seed, the first salad you serve, entirely from vegetables you grew yourself, each small joy lights a flicker of something that grows inside you… I’m not sure what to call it, it’s more than hope, more than strength, more than pride, more than the sum of all its parts: a garden brings new life, and that’s what my garden has done for me.

Garden harvest

 

I haven’t taken a narcotic pill, other than when I was briefly hospitalized, in more than four years. I take an occasional over the counter painkiller with acetaminophen and caffeine, mainly for headaches, occasionally to power through the pain in my back. It’s still there, but I’ve learned to manage it, and the gardening has strengthened my core more than years of physical therapy, Pilates, Gyrotronics, yoga, etc… When the pain gets bad I stop and rest, and my garden doesn’t mind waiting like my patients did! It has been my way back to health. It’s my physical and mental therapy, it’s my source of strength (and food and flowers and herbs!) it’s my way of life.