This is a holiday heartwarmer. In this piece, that ran in one of our local papers, you’ll be so happy to meet my wonderful friend, Doug Heyes. After the small investment of time to read his saga — which will pull you in once you start, so do start — you’ll have felt you made a friend.
I met Doug after his ordeal and was shocked to find out what he’d been through, which you’d never know now. It’s a miracle story for a miracle season, and, if you weren’t a believer in miracles before, you will be after you read this. It’s my gift to you wonderful people who give me the gift of your attention and your appreciation. Enjoy!
Miracle on the Mountain – one Man’s Journey to Thanksgiving
By Cassandra Wiseman for the Topanga Messenger – 11/20/08
It isn’t for the moment that you are struck
that you need courage,
but for the long uphill climb
back to sanity and faith and security.
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh
When people talk of miracles in normal conversation, they typically excuse the lack of belief, or skepticism, as a reaction to possibilities that can neither be understood nor explained under the basic tenets of logic and science. There’s the uncertainty about the mystical or the spiritual world that leaves plenty of room for doubt. There’s the concern that what they have experienced will be taken for coincidence, good fortune, a prime example of the chaos theory – or worse – delusion. And there’s the mystery of why one person is chosen to get the experience of divine intervention when others, equally deserving, are left to suffer without deliverance from an all-seeing supposedly benevolent spirit. Yet, even with all these lurking variables, the spiritual believers have as much faith today as ever before. Your normal person, if any of them actually exist, has far greater access to information in this age of internet and technology than men like Albert Einstein did when they spoke of their belief in God. But this access isn’t necessarily taking believers, or non-believers, any closer to knowing the truth. In fact, what may drive people crazy of late is that we know so little.
It was a beautiful autumn afternoon in Topanga; the trees were beginning to turn and there were only two white cloud wisps in a bright blue sky when I drove up to interview Doug Heyes. I knew very little about him other than that for the past fifteen years, he has worked voluntarily as a member of the National Ski Patrol at Snow Summit. Eight years ago, while out on patrol, he took a forward launching fall, landed on his head, and sustained a severe spinal cord injury which left him unable to move or feel anything from the neck down. I have to admit that I gave a little start when he came out to meet me. I knew he had somehow overcome his injuries enough to recently finish the MS-150 with his son Adam, a test of endurance for any cyclist – it involves riding 150 miles of rugged Southern California terrain – let alone a man who experienced such a devastating, life-altering injury. Nothing prepared me for the tall, gregarious man who smiled so warmly as he greeted me. I subsequently learned that he is a Southern California native who has lived in Topanga for 26 years, and was privy to the most extraordinary journey of his life that, at long last, he wanted to share publicly.
He led me to his office, replete with photographs of physical exploits, many of them taken while running whitewater rapids on the Kern with Adam. There was a photograph on his desk of both of them smiling, their arms wrapped around each other, taken this year on the summit of Mount Whitney, which they climbed together. The walls are adorned with replicas of his personal heroes, among them Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare and Kwan Yin, the female Buddha of compassion. He has the athletic, golden-boy good looks and outdoorsy physicality that you might expect of a TV star. In fact, as a young actor, he guest-starred in many TV episodes, like Police Woman and The Hardy Boys, and in mini-series, like Aspen and Captains and the Kings. He has a Hollywood pedigree that claims three generations of a show-business family. Both of his paternal grandparents were actors: his grandfather, Herbert Heyes, was a star of silent films and later became a character actor, often remembered as Mr. Gimble in the film, Miracle on 34th Street.
“My father was a very well-known writer-director named Douglas Heyes,” he explains. “We had an amazing relationship and he directed me in my first role on TV, when I was three, in the ‘Dust’ episode of The Twilight Zone. He directed me several more times over the years when I was working as a young actor. Later, after I’d been working as a writer in TV, we collaborated on several scripts together. He died on February 8th, 1993. In a very real sense, my brother and I are shepherds of a generations-long creative legacy–me as a writer-producer, and my brother as the Emmy-winning composer-musician, Mark Heyes.”
During the ‘90s, Heyes wrote scripts for television shows such as MacGyver, Hunter, The Fall Guy, Silk Stalkings, Walker, Texas Ranger, Farscape, and Pacific Blue. He also wrote and produced an award-winning and critically-acclaimed play, Seven Out, starring Perry King and Priscilla Barnes, which premiered at The Globe Playhouse in 1997. The creative bloodline is flowing to another generation as Heyes collaborates for the first time on a new screenplay with Adam, who works now as a music editor. The two share an extraordinary close relationship–they took classes together and graduated in the same ceremony with degrees in psychology from UCLA. Both plan to pursue advanced degrees in psychology.
“I don’t often tell this story,” Heyes begins. I’m not quite sure where to start.
“This actually happened on Valentines weekend of 2000 around 11 a.m. I was on patrol at Snow Summit and snow was just moving up into the canyon. We had had a light snow, it was mostly cloudy with some little breaks here and there, but the storm was clearly moving in. Whenever the weather permits we make snow at Snow Summit, so we had the snow guns on one of our beginner hills, 8-Face, and it blows out right under our principal quad express chair. I was doing a hill check, just a morning duty of checking out a certain area of the mountain, making sure everything was okay, equipment’s good, chairs are good, everybody’s doing what they should be.
“I’ve skied with the snow guns hundreds of times. My hill check took me down through the 8-Face area that morning and, uncharacteristically, I was not wearing my helmet. I always wear my helmet but it was slow, super mellow skiing, just checking things out, and I came down to our main central run called Interlude where we have most of our traffic, and everything just gleamed. I was below the last snow gun on 8-face, making the last turn at Interlude when my skis ran across a berm of snow that was created by the snow guns spewing snow–it was ungroomed and kind of a pile. When my skis ran across that berm, they stopped dead. I blew out of my heel bindings and launched forward. I intended to do a somersault, land on my back and everything would be fine. As it happened, my head hit the ground sooner than I thought it would and with a great deal of force. Instantly, I felt something like a bomb go off in my body–a vibrating gong feeling from the neck down; it was like the Liberty Bell, a resonance beyond anything you could imagine. It was intensely powerful. I became like a rag doll and tumbled two or three times and landed face down, facing up the hill on my stomach in the snow. I was spread-eagle, and realized I was just lying there. My mind was saying, ‘you weren’t going very fast … just get up.’ So I tried to get up and nothing happened from the neck down. I quickly realized I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t feel. From the neck up I could still move and was aware I was still chewing my gum. Things were still working from the neck up,” Heyes laughed, “at least as well as they ever do.
“At that moment I processed what must have happened and knew that I must have injured my spinal cord at the level where I couldn’t breathe. I looked back up hill for help. I could feel my jaw still chewing, I could lift my head up just a little and knew I was lucky to be alive. But I didn’t know what to do.”
Heyes shifted in his chair and gave me a reassuring look, like someone does when they are speaking of unsettling things.
“I looked back up the hill and saw my father standing there as real as anything–he did not look ethereal, ghostly or otherworldly, not shimmery or transparent. He was wearing the same brown pants and yellow windbreaker that I’d seen him wear a thousand times, as if he had just come out for a walk. I mouthed the words, ‘What do I do now?’
“’Just breathe,’” he said. “And my eyes looked back down again and I realized at that moment that my chest was beginning to rise and fall and I was starting to breathe. I looked up to say thank you and he was gone. I was breathing but couldn’t move anything, couldn’t key my radio for help so I literally just had to lie there.
“I’d fallen directly under a chair lift, and even though it was snowing hard now, I was wearing my red patrol jacket with a big white cross on the back. A fellow patroller riding the chair spotted the cross but he didn’t have his radio on him because he was just free-skiing. He had to ride all the way to the top of the chair to report my wreck. Finally, I heard my radio squawk, ‘Patroller down,’ and my location. Help was on the way.
“The first two guys on scene, Josh and Scott, I knew very well. We’re like a family up there, and we all have a real love and respect for one another. Three more patrollers quickly arrived, Eddie, Chuck and Alex. Eddie is a Christian minister. All of these guys who came on scene are top-drawer senior patrollers and first aid instructors, and as it happens, all five of them are devout Christian men, deacons in their churches. At this point I should add that I come from a Christian Scientist background– metaphysics, science. I’ve always had a deep faith and a real personal relationship with a divine power, just not with any particular church. I’ve done a lot of exploration–Western, Eastern–and am a man of genuine faith and service; but when I say I have an eclectic spiritual background, that’s an understatement.
“Now we get back into the actual rescue work: there’s a backboard and oxygen and we reach the point in the scenario where they are about to roll me over on my back. Right at this instant the clouds open up and a beam of light shoots out of the sky and illuminates the spot where we are. It was exactly at that moment that all five of these guys went ‘off book,’ put their hands on me and prayed — that my healing would be a sign of God’s love, compassion and will, and that I would forever be a witness to that. As they prayed, all fear simply left me. I became very clear that this was something extraordinary and was totally aware that something miraculous was taking place, something much larger than me, something in which I was only playing a part. Then they went back “on book” and did everything they needed to do medically to get me down to the hospital.
“When they came to fasten my hands across my chest, I said, ‘I feel that,’ and then I could feel it again when they were moving my other arm – not a solid feeling, but a sensation as if through a mattress. I felt this wasn’t happening to me. But I was there. I was used to running my own scenarios. In fact, the guys later laughed that I was ‘running my own wreck,’ directing them as though I was just another patroller attending to the guy on the ground — except I was now that guy. After they prayed, they finished packaging me into the toboggan and got me down off the mountain.
“After the initial MRI at Big Bear Community Hospital, the doctors could see that there was a lot of damage. The attending emergency room doctor described the injury as short of having severed my spinal cord, and was the worst skiing injury he had ever seen. The official diagnosis was a spinal cord contusion with incomplete quadriplegia and deep-cord syndrome.
“We have a saying in the ski patrol, ‘C-3-4-5 – lucky to be alive.’ I had a C-3-4-5 and 6. We had to wait seven hours for the storm to clear so that they could airlift me out to Loma Linda. During those seven hours I started to recover very gross movements of the large muscles of my legs. From the moment those patrollers laid their hands on me up on the hill I felt as if I were in a divine state of grace. Sensation began to slowly return, and I started my early recovery clear in my own connection with the divine: that a miracle had taken place and had come through the power of healing prayer. The whole experience was totally life and faith affirming. I was in this extraordinary space – a space that I can only describe as truly inspired, charged.
“I spent five or six days in Loma Linda in the critical care unit. My hands wouldn’t work, I had trouble breathing in certain positions and was struggling to deal with not being able to move, or having only very basic gross movement. A lot of people came to visit. I saw them come in with looks of despair and trepidation and then would see them leave totally clear and enlightened, knowing that I would be okay, that something extraordinary was taking place, as I told them this story of the little miracle on the mountain. I saw how it changed them.
“I was eventually transferred to Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood, which was another blessing because, at the time, we didn’t know that it just happens to have one of the best spinal cord care centers in the world. It was a Catholic hospital, run by an order of nuns who would come to visit me even though I am not Catholic. Initially, I didn’t want the literature and all that, but I was very moved by their sense of service and faith. It was a great environment and I would go to the chapel to pray. I was still unable to walk, but I could wheel myself out to the garden at Daniel Freeman. I loved it. There was a giant Banyan tree and that’s where I spent a lot of time meditating, praying and talking to God.
“In the garden under the Banyan trees I was inspired and almost possessed with the idea of recovering. We did a lot of physical and occupational therapy. When I first got to Daniel Freeman they did a squeeze test with my hands: I was able to get two pounds on my left but my right hand was minus two pounds. I couldn’t walk but I was beginning to have some core movement. Part of my transition was that I was no longer the provider of care and accepting being cared for and to stop apologizing. The task for me was simply putting one foot in front of the other. The first time I could drive my wheelchair I was elated when I blew out a lat muscle and just kept going and going because I’m used to pushing through pain. I was already in a world of pain where my body felt as if it was being roasted alive, or as if fire ants were consuming me.”
Listening to Doug Heyes talk, I wondered how jarring it must have been for such a physically active, successful, service-oriented man to have somersaulted so suddenly from the known to the unknown. Transitioning from action-hero to – not a victim – but having to depend and rely on other people’s actions to run his life; losing use of his most basic bodily functions; losing control of his life; transitioning, in one heartbeat, from vitality and outdoor adventurer to pain and long days where laboring just to squeeze a soft ball was the goal of the day; the loss of his career: it struck me when he was telling me this story of such great vicissitudes that he did so without a trace of self-pity or regret. He never said to me, “I didn’t want to go on, because it was too hard,” or, “I was ready to give up.”
Sometimes courage and faith show up when you are at your lowest point. But they are there if you choose to find them. I was struck by how much faith and courage Heyes must now have, to understand and want to share how mysterious and profound life is, and not to dismiss, repress, scorn, or rationalize the miracles that were taking place around his recovery.
“I had the best possible care from everyone. The staff just radiated love. When people ask me what got you well, I say, ‘Love is what got me through everything. Love is what healed me.’ Love to me is the most powerful force in the Universe. I know that it has been all about love, both receiving and transmitting it. When I say that the most powerful element in my healing was love, I think it’s important to mention that it was Jan (my wife of 32 years), our great love, and her totally selfless dedication to my recovery that helped me heal.
“I shared my story with a lot of people as part of my recovery both in the spinal unit and the stroke unit that was right next to it. I was feeling as though there is something in this story that would inspire the people who were recovering around me – who were in worse shape than me – and I wanted to share this experience in a way that would give hope to the other patients. I was spending a lot of time out in the garden talking to God and it was very clear to me that He was listening, and not only listening but responding. I would ask questions like why I am having this experience and recovering and I would hear a voice answer: ‘Because I love you so much,’ and it was a real sense of being clearly connected to something larger than myself.
“During this time my friend, Vicky, came to visit me. Her husband, Michael, had died five years before from Melanoma and it had been a hard and tragic time for both of them at the end. We were in the garden, and suddenly I spontaneously started telling her about the five guys who had laid their hands on me. I told her that I knew angels were in this world, including angels who wear red jackets with white crosses on them. I said there were five angels I could name in my life, and then I said, ‘And there’s one more angel. It’s Michael, and he’s here.’ Tears were streaming down her face. I had the sense very clearly that Michael had joined the conversation and I was not speaking for him but as him. There was the feeling that Michael and Vicky experienced a sense of completion and that they were able to forgive each other and that he got to tell her he loved her. It was an incredibly intimate experience. I sensed his presence and that he was speaking through me; I was just channeling. Vicky, my friend, was totally cleansed and had an amazing therapeutic and cathartic encounter.
“Just before I went to bed, Michael visited me again and told me something specific to tell his wife; it was so specific, in fact, that I didn’t want to call her in case it wasn’t true. I didn’t want to ruin what had happened in the garden and I thought what if it wasn’t true? So I held on to the message all the next day. I had a big day in rehab – they let me drive a car for the first time – so it took me until that night to actually pick up the phone and call her. ‘Michael came to visit me again last night,’ I said, ‘and he told me something that he wants me to tell you. He told me that he wants you to reread the letter that he wrote to you right after the two of you learned he was terminal, the one that you keep in the box under the bed.’ She broke down, and confirmed the existence of the letter in the box under the bed. She replied that she hadn’t been able to read that letter for years until yesterday, when she had read it for the second time.
“It was like the universe saying, ‘Just in case you think any of this is a coincidence, here’s something to think about,’ which leads me to tell you about Maisie.
“There was a very old black woman in the spinal rehab unit, named Maisie, who had totally given up. She wasn’t able to walk and was spending all of her time in bed. She was at the stage where the hospital was going to send her to a facility where you just wait to die. Maisie’s bed was way in the back of a double room so you had to peer through the darkness to a small cone of light from the desk lamp next to this small, shriveled woman lying curled up in a bed who had accepted that her end was coming. I visited her several times, and we became friends.
“The day after the experience with Vicky, I was back out in the garden, asking, ‘If it’s possible for a group of some guys to perform this healing and transmit this energy to me, then why couldn’t I do that for someone else?’
“And the voice in the garden responded, ‘What makes you think you can’t?’
“’Oh,’ I said simply, and wheeled my chair around and back upstairs, grabbed my friend, Pat, saying, ‘Pat, I need a witness.’ Now Pat was a three-hundred-pound Christian black woman who rode around on a smart scooter and was there for chronic pain. She had been praying for me – a wonderful, warm, earth mother, a deeply faithful, loving woman, an extraordinary presence, and we had become instant friends when I told her my story. We wheeled into Maisie’s room and pulled up on either side of her bed.
“‘Maisie,’ I said, ‘I’ve been in the garden again, and God told me that he was going to allow me to heal people by putting my hands on them.’ She looked at me and said, ‘Oh, would you put your hands on me, please?’
“She had a whole list of stuff that she wanted me to pray for – she couldn’t walk, she had bed sores, she wasn’t eating, she thought the nursing staff hated her, and I started to pray. I just asked for God to join us and that Maisie would be healed and we prayed for half an hour or more and during that time this incredible energy took place in the room. And when it was over – it was clearly over.
“I wheeled back into my room and fell asleep immediately. The next day Pat and I met in the corridor on our little vehicles and here came Maisie walking down the hall with her physical therapist! She’s walking down the hall over to us saying, ‘There he is, the power of Christ has done come though Doug and I can walk again today!’ I know it was Maisie’s own faith that healed her. I just got to be a part of that. She continued to improve, and on the day I left the hospital to go home, Maisie also left the hospital to go home.
“Through my direct personal experience, I’ve discovered that we are much more capable of healing than we give ourselves credit for, or than our Western medical establishment generally acknowledges. Further, there are levels of non-physical healing that directly impact a person’s recovery – psychological, emotional, familial, spiritual – and it is possible to access these levels and affect them. These energies are very real and have tremendous power in the recovery process.
“Following the whirlwind first year of my recovery, I still had a great deal of pain and paraesthesia (numbness, burning, decreased sensation and motor dysfunction), and reached a point where I hit a plateau in my healing. It seemed as if that was going to be the extent of my recovery. My doctors told me that I had been extremely fortunate to recover to the extent that I had and that I shouldn’t expect much more.
“It was a difficult time and a disheartening prognosis. At about 16-months, a friend steered me toward a Qi Gong workshop (the ancient Chinese practice of healing with the mind) given by a Grand Master practitioner. The result was quite extraordinary and opened doors to a whole new level of healing and recovery. I have continued to study ever since, and Adam and I are also students of T’ai Chi and Kung Fu.
“That’s the big miracle part of my story. The resonance of that story has been that this dynamic of healing and recovery – for myself and others – has become the central focus of my life. With the addition of Qi Gong and breathing techniques, I’ve combined healing forms that are all valid. Part of it has to do with being open and receptive and part of it has to do with being available to let the magic do its work. Most of all, it’s important simply to ask.
“One of the effects of my injury was that it knocked me out of work for a couple of years while I focused on my recovery. By the time I was able to work again, the shows I’d worked for were done and the people I’d worked for were doing other things. It’s pretty well known that writers my age, regardless of experience, are having a tough time finding work in the business these days. It’s a bit ironic, because I’m still very much at the top of my game physically and creatively.
“I’m not sure if it’s possible to get completely better immediately, but I do know it’s possible to get a whole lot better right away. I still deal with residual challenges relative to my injury, but I greet each day with the idea that here is another opportunity to get better. I’ve continued to steadily improve, and now participate regularly in triathlons and other endurance events such as the MS-150 ride. These events for us are like celebrations of recovery, as well as opportunities to make a difference. It’s all about gratitude, compassion and service.
“Finally, as a cyclist who lives and trains in Topanga, I want to ask people to please be kind and drive safely. Stay on the right of the double yellow line. We’re very exposed when we’re out there with nothing under us but a 22-pound bike. The person riding that bike is a real person, a good person, a person with a family, a person to look out for and take care of. Please try to give us space and a little cooperation. To my fellow cyclists, let’s do our best to cooperate with the others on the road. If we can all adopt attitudes of looking out for one another, taking care of one another, wouldn’t our world be a better place? And to everyone who rides, skis, skateboards or snowboards, please: Wear your helmets!”
From: Dr. Wes Wheadon [wheado@aol.com]
Thank you for sending this very touching and beautifully written story about Doug and his recovery. It was exactly what I needed to read this Christmas Eve day.
Have a beautiful holiday time.
From: Flo Lawrence [fdlawrence@yahoo.com ]
Thank you for forwarding the beautiful article on Doug Heyes. Interesting that I had just taken a healing course 2-4 weeks ago. Your article was very encouraging.
From: Ralph Blum [blumblum@earthlink.net]
Great tayloring.
From: Adonnah Langer [adonnah@2langers.com]
Very nice. Thank you.
He’s a miracle all right. I’ve been thinking about exploring one of those energy disciplines this year. Here’s another indicator for that direction.
From: Sharon Sherrard [sharonsherrard@aol.com]
Wow what a story! Thank you so much for sharing it … such an inspiration and so much love. Thank you my friend.
From: Camilla Rees [crgr@aol.com]
Thanks, Suzanne! Wonderful story:) Happy New Year!!!
From: Barbara Marx Hubbard [bmh@evolve.org]
Thank you, Suzanne, for that beautiful story. It is so heartening.
From: James K. Cummings [jkc@kellertcommunications.com]
What an inspiring, tear-generating, heart-opening story. I just read this as I prepare to go to daven (pray) in my local minyan. A lovely gift on this fifth day of Chanukah & Christmas, another miraculous day to be alive.
From: Anne Baring [annebaring@freeuk.com]
What a wonderful heart-lifting story. Thank you for sending it.
I had a friend staying last night and we talked about crop circles and I told him about your DVD and showed him the books I have. The other dimension felt very close.
With love and the hope that your work will reach many people.
From: James B. Hopkins [drjames@harmonixhealing.com]
BRAVO!!!
From: Laura Whipple [lwhipple@prontomail.com]
A very inspiring story!
Did you know that before the jolly round Santa we know was created he was actually a Scandinavian Sami Shaman? Merry Christmas!
From: Gloria Gold [GOLDNGLO@aol.com]
Thanks do much for that wonderful report. Really excellent!
From: Lisa-Catherine Cohen [lcc@lisa-catherine.com]
I read the entire Doug Heyes story and was, indeed, inspired. Thank you for it.
From: Ed Elkin [EdElkin@aol.com]
Thanks for the wondrous miracle story, inspiring as I deal with the results of a massive tear in a rotator cuff injury to my left shoulder that required an operation .. resulting in Very SLOW healing. Supposed to take a year or more. Maybe accepting a miracle healing will be easier now.
Blessings to you for Chanukah on this Christmas Eve Day.
From: Alex Rose [nemorose@sbcglobal.net]
I LOVED THE MIRACLE on THE MOUNTAIN ARTICLE. THANKS AND SAT NAM.
From: Michael Olson [maolson@erols.com]
Thanks for sending My Friend’s Miracle on the Mountain. As I have mentioned we have a son, Andrew, 36, with cerebral palsy who has never been able to walk. He frequently expresses the desire to be able to do things for himself. In prayer, I have asked Jesus, “Why don’t you just heal Andrew?” and I got an answer similar to Doug Heyes, “Why don’t you do it?”
I am still working on the project! A friend, whose wife is nearly blind, and I meet frequently to study and compare insights on healing, so Doug Heyes’s experience is very encouraging.
Merry Christmas and all that is politically correct!
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