I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon to get my meds reupped. It’s a normal annual appointment, but it’s also…the first regular doctor’s appointment since my medical crisis. And, yes, this is my life now. Everything is marked as post ‘the incident’. Or what I usually call my medical crisis. Or medical emergency. It’s shorthand for twenty minutes of utter chaos and hell.
To recap: I had non-COVID-related walking pneumonia. I called 911 at three in the morning on September 3rd, 2021, because I could not breathe. The operator told me to unlock the front door and wait for the police. I did that and then promptly passed out in the front hallway. I was not breathing when the police arrived so they bagged me with oxygen as they waited for the EMTs. When the latter arrived, I had a cardiac arrest. They gave me CPR and defibbed me before putting me in the ambulance. They rushed me to Regions Hospital, which was 20 minutes away.
On the way, I had another cardiac arrest. They gave me more CPR and jabbed me with an EpiPen. I also had an ischemic stroke, which is always the last thing I mention. It’s funny. The cardiac arrests are the showstoppers. People don’t survive them very often, and I had two in rapid succession. Every time a new medical person met me, they told me to a person that I was a miracle.
The stroke, though, that’s the sleeper condition. The cardiac arrests, once I survived them, that was that. There was nothing wrong with my heart so the cardiac arrests didn’t actually permanently hurt it. It’s funny because when my heart doc explained it to me, it made perfect sense. When I brought it up with other medical personnel because they erroneously assumed there was something wrong with my heart, I was met with a universal ‘you are a miracle’. My favorite story is the nurse who came to check in on me.
The computer program that she was using wasn’t working so she had to imput everything she knew a;bout me. I told her briefly what happened to me, and she made the appropriate noises at the approrpiate times. Then, however, she was quickly rattling off the different diseases/treatments I might have had, and when she got to heart surgery, she said yes. My brother was there, and we both said, “Wait, no. No heart surgery.” The nurse stopped and stared at me.
“No heart surgery?” There was amazement in her voice, and I had to chuckle to myself. No one seemed able to believe that what happened to me actually happened as I told it. I did not leave anything out in the retelling nor was I embellishing. How I related it earlier is exactly how it happened.
She placed her hand on my upper arm and told me that I was literally a walking miracle. I cannot overemphasize how many times i heard this sentiment being uttered. And I get it. From the medical perspective, it was something you don’t see every day. Or every year, really. I also get that it’s uplifting for them. I can’t imagine the pain and heartbreak they have to witness on the regular.
Here’s the thing, though. I am an actual human being and this is my actual life. My mom got mad when I said that I did not want to write a screenplay based on my life. She said that I was a miracle and that my story would be so inspiring to other people.
First of all, so what? It’s not my job to be a feel-good story for other people. That reduces me to inspo p0rn, which is a problem for people with disabilities. It was just another way to dehumanize someone or make them into something they were not.
Secondly, it’s still my life. It wasn’t as if the credits rolled once I woke up. This was not something that people tended to recognize–the end of the story for them was just the beginning for me. It wasn’t as if I could ride off into the sunset and live happily every after. this was where things got interesting–not where they stopped.
The nurse’s aide who came once a week to wash my hair also marveled about how well I was doing for how serious a medical crisis I experienced. She had an ex (who she wanted to be her current, even though she denied it strenuously) who had been on the varsity hockey team when they were in high school. He coached kids in hockey as an adult and had a seemingly normal life–until he had three cardiac arrests and was in a coma for several months. When he woke up, he was told he would never work again. He could not drive or even walk, really, and his feet had necrotic skin on them. His whole life was turned upside down and it would never be the same again.
For me, I had a few short term memory issues and I could not do simple math in my head. Neither of these were a big deal, and I would gladly make that trade-off any day of the week.
The thing is, for the first year after I woke up, I was taking things easy. One day at a time and all that. I didn’t expect to be alive, and I considered them my bonus days. I didn’t have a plan for my future because I honestly didn’t know how much longer I had. I mean, none of us did, really, but I had been closer to death than most people ever get before the actual thing. It was strange, honestly, and I had no idea what to do with it.
Now, I want to start taking life for granted–just a little bit. To assume that I am not going to die for athird and final time any day soon. In other words, it’s time to start planning.