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One day in 1998 I couldn't get out of bed. I woke up and my whole right side was paralyzed. I had to go to the bathroom, except I couldn't get up. Half my body was dead weight. I just laid there until my housekeeper Marina came. She called an ambulance and then she called my mother, who helped me get to the hospital.
There, I got an injection that helped me move again. The paralysiswas temporary. But it scared me. Soon I had my first major [neck] operation, the first of 12 that I'd eventually have between then and the end of American Idol's first season in 2002. Each time I had an operation [for everything from herniated discs to a painful bone spur], the doctors said it was successful. I'd get excited. But then it didn't work. I'd ask, "Why am I still in terrible pain?"
By 1999, everywhere I went, I'd look for something sharp to lean up against and jam a corner into my neck – something to fight the pain. I went to pain-management doctors, all of whom make you sign consent forms because you're dealing with hardcore pain pills, and they don't want to be liable if you became addicted. I always laughed at this because I knew no drug ever worked for me. Over the years I tried so many of them, and I knew enough to say, "Don't give me Vicodin; it doesn't work. Don't give me OxyContin; it doesn't work. Don't give me Soma . . ."
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