The healing power of art [PODCAST]

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“Each morning before the doctors came in for rounds; I’d paint feverishly whatever abstraction came to mind and what evolved from my situation. When I completed my pieces, I felt like I had not only gotten out my frustrations and worry, but also found a place of joy and gratitude. I would put each canvas outside my hospital room, and soon the unit began to catch on, even taking patients by my room to see whatever I had created that day. Now, I was sustaining my aliveness and inspiring others, which filled myself with unanticipated meaning and satisfaction. Ironically, the darker the circumstances became, the more joyous my paintings seem today. Every tree seems to be singing and dancing, although the tear-drops and lightning bolts are always streaked across the bold backgrounds.

Once I discovered painting, my world changed. I had found a way to express things that were too painful, complicated, and overwhelming for words. Suddenly, when the uncertainty around me seemed frighteningly unmanageable, the strokes of my paintbrush could soothe me as I created a peaceful world that my soul longed to rest in as a place of peaceful solace. My passion could ignite instead of my anger and despair. And slowly, the good feelings overwhelmed the bad because I could control the positive world portrayed on my canvases with what my subconscious chose to create.”

Amy Oestreicher is the author of  My Beautiful Detour: An Unthinkable Journey from Gutless to Grateful and can be reached at her self-titled site, Amy Oestreicher.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “Art therapy and the intersection between chronic illness and mental health.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Amy Oestreicher. She’s an author, she’s a playwright, she’s an artist, and she’s a KevinMD contributor. She wrote the article “Art therapy and the intersection between chronic illness and mental health.” It is an excerpt from her book, My Beautiful Detour. Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Oestreicher: Hey, thanks for having me.

Kevin Pho: So we’re going to get into your article and your book in a bit, but first off, please share your story and your journey to where you are today.

Amy Oestreicher: All right. Well, in a nutshell, I was perfectly happy and healthy my entire life, and then I just had very bad stomach pain in April of my senior year of high school, and things escalated very quickly. I was rushed to the emergency room, and due to a blood clot sitting on the mesenteric artery, I got sepsis. And apparently the story goes that as soon as the surgeons cut into me in the ER, my stomach ruptured and literally, you know, hit the ceiling of the operating room, because there was so much internal pressure. So I was in a coma for months, and when I woke up a month later, finally transferred to the Columbia ICU, the surgeon told me I didn’t have a stomach anymore and I couldn’t eat or drink. They didn’t know if or when that would ever be possible again.

So, zipping ahead, you know, I was discharged from the ICU because finally the inflammation was down and I wasn’t in danger of dying, and I was sent home on IVs. But I had no digestive system, so I was surviving. How do you live in the outside world, trying to go about a normal life, when you can’t even have a sip of water? So I had to kind of trudge through day to day of uncertainty, trying to find some kind of answer. And so basically my dad had to contact every surgeon and doctor he could find, send them my sacks and sacks of medical records, and see who was crazy and creative enough to think of some kind of idea to hook me back up, because there was no, you know, manual for this.

And we finally found a doctor at Yale who did a 19-hour surgery. But no, this was not a perfect science. There were many disconnected parts of me, and zipping ahead to the end, it took 27 surgeries, 28 with a recent car accident, 27 surgeries to reconstruct my digestive system. So they, you know, took my, kind of like a J-pouch, and it made me a little, the closest thing would be like a gastric bypass, but I don’t have a stomach. But I do have a working digestive system. I’m 33 now, and grateful that I’m here.

Kevin Pho: Wow, that’s an amazing story and journey, and I’m glad that you’re doing well now. In the article, you talk about art therapy and the intersection between chronic illness and mental health. Can you share the story behind the article and why you decided to include that as part of your book?

Amy Oestreicher: Yes. My first TED talk was about detours, you know, finding the beauty in detours, and I was always creative. I was born doing musical theater. But visual art, which I focused my article on for you, was one of those unexpected flowers in my detour that I discovered completely by accident in my 13th surgery. Because surgery number 13 was supposed to get me to eat, and it worked for a week, and then my wound exploded and I was air-evacked back to Yale. Talk about losing hope altogether. Especially, it’s very scary for a patient who wants to put all their trust in doctors, and the doctors were literally, you know, honestly clueless and trying to figure out what to do. And I was thinking, “Oh my God, if doctors don’t have the answer, I certainly don’t.”

And so my wonderfully supportive mother, who stayed in the ICU with me for all of those months, started buying, like, art supplies from the gift shop there, trying to get me to do something. And one day, because now we were there, like, three, four months in Yale, and while doctors tried to take me for a million CT scans and every possible thing they could think of, I was so angry that I just took a paintbrush, and I’m like, “I don’t know what the heck I’m doing, but I’m just going to do something.” You know, it was out of that physical energy of just frustration. And I didn’t realize it was kind of a magic formula. As soon as I put my paintbrush on there, I could be with whatever I was feeling. I didn’t really know what I was feeling, but somehow getting that out made me feel better. And then when I stepped back, it was just a painting. And that was really how I first experienced the transformative power of art.

And then from the outside in, all of these nurses, who were really, they were really about to, like, kind of put me on, like, lockdown because I was so frustrated, they finally saw, like, “OK, now we know what she’s feeling.” Like, it opened communication. And soon they would come in to see what I was painting, and then every day for the rest of the time I was there, they’d take one of my paintings and they’d put it outside my cubicle. And then they would wheel their patients around that were on wheelchairs, just to see my art. And so that kind of gave me a meaning and a day-to-day mission going forward.

So, talk about, you know, the connection between physical and mental health: I started to feel better, and I was discharged from Yale, still not with an answer. You know, I was disheartened, with more fistulas and uncertainty, but I had art, and it made the days easier until finally I could get to that day where we found another answer and I could get through. And so I really credit art for being that turning point that made me realize, OK, you know, I may never be able to predict my medical circumstances, but my attitude through it, I do have control in that. And, you know, that really has some weight.

Kevin Pho: And what role does art play in your life today?

Amy Oestreicher: Oh my gosh, I have so many canvases stacked all over my house, it’s insane. But art has become a huge part of my life, personally and professionally. I mean, I just premiered a new one-woman musical that is about the later stages of my journey, but it actually uses 200 projections of the mixed-media art to show the internal and external landscape of PTSD, because it may look like one thing on the outside, and words can’t always, you know.

I always say a paintbrush helped me express what was too overwhelming for words, because we all feel very similar emotions. But sometimes when we try to think it out, and someone wants to say, “OK, tell us how you’re feeling,” we freeze, because really, emotion just feels like energy. And we can take that energy and use it in destructive ways if we don’t have a healthy way to channel it. You know, that’s how people can turn to destructive coping mechanisms, which you hear about a lot with PTSD or anything terrible that happens. We feel stuff, we don’t know what to do with it, and it’s like this overwhelming ball. And so, literally, I could dip my paintbrush into it.

So, to this day, you know, I still have uncertainty in my life medically, and I mean, I think the world is going through an uncertain time right now. But if we just look at feelings like fear and uncertainty and anger not as, like, bad things we have to repress or run away from, because the more, you know, I learned, the more I stomp on things and run away from things, they were just even bigger. But painting was, and still is, a way that I can work with it. It kind of embraced that mess of creating and transformed it.

And believe it or not, I still have no formal art training. It’s all by instinct. But I’ve shown my stuff professionally and in shows. I just published a book of my art. I’m working on another book that’s called Creativity and Gratitude that’s actually going to show people the tools I learned so they can make their own. But, you know, I do theater, I do all that stuff, but I need something in my life without words, and art just keeps giving me joy and brings the people in my life joy.

Kevin Pho: And that’s wonderful to hear, and your story is definitely a testament to the transformative power of art. So, as a physician, over the years I’ve learned so much from my own patients, and I’m sure that you have a lot of advice that you can share with the clinicians listening to the show. So what are a few tips that you could share with my clinician audience from a patient perspective?

Amy Oestreicher: I have a few. First of all, you know, for all of those, I didn’t mention it turned into over, almost seven years, six years before I could eat or drink anything. And, you know, I just presented at a conference called Dueling Diagnosis, like the intersection between physical and mental health issues, and the head of the conference was like, “Amy, you were like the poster child for dueling diagnosis.” Because, you know, I would tell the doctors when I saw them, you know, “I’m hungry. Like, what do I do?” And some of them would look at me, you know, relatively blankly and say, you know, “The TPN,” which was my IV nutrition, “is giving you 3,000 calories a day. You shouldn’t be hungry.” And for me, that was very emblematic of how hunger is also a psychological thing. And so it took a long time, and I think art actually was a way to help kind of give them that feeling.

But, you know, mind and body are so related. And I remember, you know, my mother, when doctors would come in, and they’re so afraid to give you any kind of belief that might not be true, so they would come in and say, you know, “We can’t guarantee, you know, she’ll be able to eat again.” And my mother would walk them out of the room and say, “Don’t you dare ever say that to my daughter.” And it’s not denial, but, like, a doctor’s role is to, you know, be realistic, but also they have to fuel that hope in the patient, because hope, I’ve learned, you know, I call it one of my four skills to resilience, you know, hope is medicine.

And one of the simplest tips, but so effective, and I learned what a game-changer this was for others when I presented at a nursing conference. I was saying, you know, nurses, by the nature of what they do, they want to help you fix things. And so when you tell them how you’re feeling, really, when there is no quick fix, a lot of them feel helpless and they ask, like, “What can we do, like, if we can’t fix it?” And I said, “Believe it or not, really what a patient wants is they just want you to listen.” It is, like, the best possible kind of cure. We want to feel like our voice is heard. For me, before I could find the words, art was my kind of intermediate step to doing that, where at least people saw and took in and appreciated what I was feeling. But when we’re finally ready to talk about that, give us the space to talk about it. You really just want to be heard.

And so as soon as I said that, then all the nurses were like, “No, no, that’s too simple. You’re sure that’s all?” And then a week later, I got an email from a nurse saying, “You wouldn’t believe it. Like, a patient was telling me how they were feeling, and I just sat there and listened, and they were so thankful, like I fixed all their problems. I didn’t do anything.” I said, “Yes, you did.” So I think there’s power in that.

And then just one more thing is, I know doctors, you know, come to this work because they know we are all, you know, people behind being patients. But make us feel that way, you know. Approach us like the people we are without this illness, that we are people outside of this medical circumstance. You know, when I heard someone refer to me as a patient, at first I would just fire back, “I’m a person. I’m a person.” And I would put pictures of, like, myself on stage before this, just because I needed that reminder. So just embrace that feeling and be curious, even if it doesn’t directly, you know, address the work. I feel there’s always time for that.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. As physicians, we deal with so many things that prevent us from listening, whether it’s bureaucracy or quality metrics, and there are so many obstacles that get in the way. So sometimes your story and your message is something that we need to hear, to get back to the reason why you went into medicine in the first place.

Amy Oestreicher: And I thought you need to see that people do miraculously recover and get better. I mean, for the many doctors that said I would never eat or drink again, or that I wouldn’t live, you know, or they’d never find a surgery to do X, Y, and Z, you know, things happen. So I think they need to see those positive stories, too, just because I know you deal with so many terrible outcomes all the time, too. So it’s important that you guys have that hope as well.

Kevin Pho: My final question: What’s your take-home message to the KevinMD audience?

Amy Oestreicher: Oh, wow. So that was one of my take-home messages. First, I must say self-care is so important for doctors, because there is a quality of numbness I’m sure you have to take on, because how else do you deal? I remember in the ICU, four kids died while I was there, and nurses would have this ritual where they’d close the curtains, and, you know, that has to do something. So make sure that you all are taking care of yourselves, and that you’re aware of the dissociation you need to get some of the harder things done. But whether it’s art for yourself or somebody, you know, something that makes you feel and that makes you feel good, and when you do have those hard feelings that come up when you face something in your practice, that you know healthy ways to deal with them, and that there are people you can talk to. I think self-care for doctors is so important, and to know that your work is really appreciated.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you so much for that wonderful advice. Thank you for sharing your story and your journey. We are talking to Amy Oestreicher. She is the author of My Beautiful Detour. There was an excerpt from that book on KevinMD, “Art therapy and the intersection between chronic illness and mental health.” Thank you so much for being on the show.

Amy Oestreicher: Thank you. I must say, this painting, Singing Tree, that is the painting I’m talking about, the first painting I created in Yale. And what I like about it is it was created at a time of so much pain, but transforming it, all you see is a happy tree now. So that’s my take-home message: Do something that can transform whatever you’re going through.

Kevin Pho: Fantastic. Thank you very much.

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