Healing from the Inside Out and the Outside In

By Sheri Perl

THIS PROFOUNDLY INTERESTING story of one woman’s astonishing recovery from two painful and debilitating diseases is an extraordinary testament to the miraculous powers of spiritual healing. At age sixteen, Sheri Perl was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. After two years of medical treatment, she was fighting for her life on the operati

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sheryl Migdol
• Release date: Mar 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780984666539

Book preview

Chapter One

My First Illness

In the summer of 1967, I was touring the West Coast with a group of thirty girls when the first symptoms of illness appeared. The daughter of a wealthy businessman, I was a healthy, attractive, normal sixteen-year-old girl. I was in no way prepared for the events that were about to take place in my life.

The teen tour had started off on a high note. I had become close with eleven other girls and we instantly formed a clique. We called ourselves the dirty dozen, passed around pictures of our boyfriends, compared and tried on each other’s clothing, and engaged in the normal conversations of young women. There was nothing that could have prepared me for the severe pain that seemed to come upon me from out of nowhere one morning while we were visiting the Grand Canyon. While all the other girls were getting dressed to go down to breakfast, I found that I was unable to get out of my bed. I must have eaten something, I thought, this will pass soon. I had never experienced serious illness before. Naturally, I assumed that the sharp abdominal pain would go away as mysteriously as it came.

I informed my mother of the difficulty I was having two days after it began. The sympathy in her voice made me feel like bursting into tears, and yet I fought hard to hold my emotions inside. I wanted so to be grown up. Determined not to appear the baby, I refused my mother’s requests to return home, visiting more bathrooms in Disneyland than exhibits.

The rest of the tour was a nightmare. From the time the symptoms began until our arrival back in Kennedy Airport eight weeks later, there was not one day in which I wasn’t plagued with severe discomfort. I became increasingly crankier and more preoccupied as my illness progressed. As a result, the other girls, who considered themselves very worldly and sophisticated, grew impatient. I felt very shut off from them, even disliked. I ached with loneliness.

During the tour I grew used to the condition, which somehow made it more bearable. I could pretty much expect to have cramps periodically throughout the day and an intense case of the runs every morning. But frighteningly, a new symptom developed the last ten days of the trip which was more acute and disturbing. I began to experience pain in my esophagus whenever I swallowed. Simultaneously, I felt an itch behind my right ear. I knew that I wasn’t going crazy, but all of this was very unnerving. Because the other girls seemed so annoyed with my complaints, I was afraid to open up to them. Therefore, I held my fear inside of myself, along with the hope that when I returned home, I would see a good doctor capable of curing me.

I could clearly see the concern on both my parents’ faces when we finally met again at Kennedy Airport. They, too, had expected my condition to clear up by now, and they were anxious for me to start medical treatment. My mother watched me in amazement as I cried and kissed each girl good-bye, promising to write and pretending a kinship I didn’t feel. She knew that I felt estranged from the girls, and was surprised to see the measures I would take to pretend otherwise. I was a little surprised myself, but while I remained in the company of others, I felt the pressure to fit in. I was relieved now to be separate from the girls and the traveling. No longer would I have to contend with filthy train bathrooms or the impatient looks of annoyance from the other girls. The sight of my father in the front seat, dark and handsome, like a sheik, and my mother, blond and fair-skinned, like an angel, created a feeling of security. I couldn’t remember a time in my entire sixteen years when a problem arose that they could not solve. Yet a sense of foreboding pervaded the air as we drove to suburban New Jersey.

My parents were determined that I see a doctor immediately. Of course, I knew that this was inevitable, and I feared it greatly. I presume that most people don’t particularly enjoy going to the doctor, but to me it had always been an enormous trauma. I received more than one polio shot on the sidewalk outside my doctor’s office, when the nurse had finally put a stop to my getaway. I found taking my clothes off and sitting on the white paper uncomfortable and embarrassing. The very thought of needles scared the hell out of me. It is a good thing that I had no idea of what lay ahead.

As the car pulled into the circular driveway that led to our home, I felt as if I had never left. Everything looked just as it had before, green and lush and beautiful. My brothers Rich and Rob were home to greet me, along with Dee - Louise Miller, our live-in governess. She had joined the family at Richard’s birth in 1957. Our cook Mamie, who made the best southern fried chicken in the world (as far as we were concerned) had prepared her specialty in honor of my return. Everything was just as it had been, except for one thing. I was unable to eat my chicken dinner without experiencing the familiar pain in my abdomen, and the unfamiliar pain and itch combo in my esophagus and ear.

An internist, a friend of my father’s, was the first doctor to see me. He had been treating my father for high blood pressure for a few years, and my parents thought that he might be able to help me. At least they knew him. Surely it would be a good place to start.

On the day of our appointment I was as nervous as a jackrabbit. I thoroughly resented the experience from start to finish. My mother and I sat nervously together in the waiting room for quite some time until a nurse took my personal history and then led me to a room where I was instructed to undress and put on one of those obscene paper gowns. I was then asked to trot off to the bathroom and provide a little urine sample, and then to come back and sit on the table and wait for the doctor--how I hated that white paper! When the doctor entered the room, I was glad that he was a small man and not very intimidating. Nonetheless my stomach seemed to turn over a few times as he examined me, drew blood from my arm, and then ran some X rays of my esophagus. Due to my obsession with the esophagus problem, I completely glossed over the abdominal pain in my discussion with the doctor, which led him to diagnose and treat only the esophagus situation. He said my esophagus looked a little swollen in one place, that it was probably a result of nerves, and he prescribed a muscle relaxer to be taken a half hour before meals. He said that it would probably improve within a week or two and that he didn’t find anything else wrong with me.

My mother and I left. As I look back I realize that this day marked the beginning of our medical companionship. As we drove to the pharmacy to fill the prescription, I was satisfied. The dreaded doctor’s appointment was over and I was free again to live my life. My mother, on the other hand, expressed her dismay over the fact that no light had been shed on my digestive problems. She wanted me to see another doctor, while I just wanted to be left alone. I had accepted the stomach problem. I didn’t want to see it get in the way of my enjoyment any more than it already had. My boyfriend was about to leave for his freshman year in college, and we wanted to attend a number of social events. I was anticipating an eventful and exciting junior year as a member of the Millburn High School cheer leading squad, a status that I had worked very hard to achieve. I didn’t have time to be sick. Moreover, I had grown so used to the symptoms that I figured the best action was to take no action at all. Of course, my reasoning was powered by my fear of doctors. My parents were aware of this, and were not going to go along with it. They had enormous faith in the medical profession and felt that once we found the right doctor, my problems would be over. The decision was handed down to me by my father while he sat in his chair at the head of the long dining-room table: I’d see another doctor and we would not give up until I was completely well again. It was inconceivable and ludicrous to my parents that this should not come about. They could not accept the notion that I would just continue to live with pain and discomfort. My father’s presence was always very strong and I knew that I could not buck him. An appointment was made.

The next man who treated me was a gastroenterologist, a specialist in digestive disorders. Dr. Marvin, with whom I would eventually have a long and involved relationship, seemed very alien and distant to me as he first walked into the examining room. There I was, biting my nails, wearing one of those daring little examining robes, sitting on the white paper. My mother stood just a few feet away from me. I sensed a ripple of fear shoot through both of us as our hope walked in the door.

The doctor was not very cheerful or communicative as he went about his business of listening to my heart, taking my blood pressure, and pressing on my stomach to see where it hurt. My mother held my hand as the doctor drew blood from my other arm. No one knew better than she how terrified I’d always been of needles. Holding hands became a ritual with us, symbolizing to me that we were both in this together. The doctor then asked me to drink two large glasses of a pink chalky liquid and explained to me how the barium would illuminate my intestinal tract, thus allowing him to have a closer look inside. As I lay on the cold X-ray table with a cup in my hand and a straw in my mouth, Dr. Marvin, from inside a booth, would say, Now take a drink, drink, drink, now hold it, hold your breath, hold it, okay, breathe.

My mother and I couldn’t believe it when the doctor reported that the X rays showed nothing conclusive. There was no diagnosis to be made and no treatment to be instituted. He recommended trying antacids but no further instructions were given.

My mother was thoroughly disheartened. I was so glad to get my ass off the white paper and onto the seat of the car that all I could experience was enormous relief. As we drove home, I resolved to sweep the symptoms under the rug whenever I could. My plan was to find a way to just live around them.

I continued this way throughout the rest of the summer of 1967 and into the fall. We were now approaching 1968, a new year. I was moving toward it with a condition that was bearable, yet constant. I made certain adjustments in order to deal with my symptoms. For example, by this time I had developed such a bad case of hemorrhoids that immediately after stepping out of bed in the morning, I would start running a bath. This way I could dive into the warm soothing water as soon as my angry bowels granted me parole from the toilet. Beyond such small adjustments, I tried to maintain what I considered to be a normal existence, attending school and interacting socially. As a teen I did not understand my fear or my motivations. I constantly pushed myself to keep active, and cover up my illness rather than address it.

My home life was bustling and active. My younger brothers, ten-year-old Richie and eight-year-old Bobby, were not fully aware of my illness. My parents didn’t believe in telling children upsetting things. For the most part I behaved normally, and an occasional whine was not seen as anything out of the ordinary. Sondra, my oldest sister by four years, was a junior at Simmons College in Boston and was not overly alarmed about my health either. My siblings and I had never experienced any serious illness, and we naturally did not anticipate one now.

As for my parents, they had been through transitions and changes all of their lives, and outside of this growing concern that they felt for me, their lives were blossoming. My father was achieving financial security, very important to the son of struggling immigrant parents. Through skill and tenacity he had developed a thriving business with many employees. He was proud to provide for his family as his own parents had been unable to provide for him. We moved from impoverished Newark to patrician Short Hills. By the time I was ten years old, I was living in the lap of luxury. I had my own room, with my own private bathroom, equipped with both a tub and shower stall. My room was large, all decorated in my favorite color, pink, complete with a luscious pink canopy bed. We lived in a truly fantastic house with a basement large enough for many parties and an indoor swimming pool, which kept us busy after school and on weekends.

Our life in Short Hills sounds elegant, I know, but for me (and Sondra as well), it required difficult adjustments. We had lived our early life in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods. I took for granted the fact that I always fit in. In the Short Hills school system, however, I was the only Jewish girl in the two fourth-grade classes, and for the first time in my life I was exposed to anti-Semitism. A number of the children said that they could not play with me because I killed their God. It made no sense to me, but I was nonetheless hurt by it. The years in Short Hills were not easy, happy, or carefree ones for me or Sondra, who had similar experiences with her classmates.

But for my father, the house was wonderful, a symbol of the security and life-style he never had. Everything in his adult life was flowing just as he wanted it to, and he felt powerful and in control. I knew this, and that my mother shared his happiness. I wanted to do nothing to endanger it.

As winter turned to spring, however, I found it more difficult to cover up my illness. My symptoms became more frequent and severe. I began to double over from pain that deeply laced into me and did not pass so quickly. My parents were alarmed. My mother made an appointment with Dr. Marvin right away.

I remember the day prior to my appointment quite clearly. Toward the afternoon my mother nervously explained to me that I could not partake in the family barbecue as I was