My third re-birthday is coming up. It’s the third anniversary of my medical crisis–well, it will be the day after the day this is posted. September 3rd, 2021. That was the day I died–twice. And came back to life–twice. Sometimes, I think I should have chosen the day I woke up as my re-birthday, but to me, this was the more impactful day. Even if I don’t remember it.
That’s the weird part to me. Such a momentous day in my life is one I don’t remember at all. I’ve made my peace with it (and that I’m missing most of the week prior to it), but it’s still something I muse about from time to time. I woke up (or was still up) at three in the morning and could not breathe. I had the wherewithal to get up and get the cordless phone, to call 9-1-1, and to follow what they told me to do. Which was to go to the front door and unlock it. Then, I promptly passed out in the front hallway, which is how the cops found me.
I rarely think about it any longer, but when I do, it never ceases to amaze me. I did all that while being unable to breathe. The cops arrived in time to bag me (with oxygen) and keep me alive until the EMTs came. That the cops knew they had to bag me and had the ability to do so was a miracle in and of itself. It helped that where I live is a sleepy little suburb and they could get to me in two minutes was a big plus. Had they taken any longer, I would have been permanently dead. The brain cannot do without oxygen for very long. Brain damage starts in less than a minute, and you will not live past fifteen minutes. (Ten minutes is very dicey.)
I have very little brain damage (at least that I can tell), so they probably got to my house in less than a minute. It was helpful that I was able to open the door before passingh out because otherwise, that would have added several valuable minutes to the time it would have taken for them to respond.
This is what gets to me when I think about it. So many things had to go right in order for me to survive. Let me recap.
First of all, I had to call 9-1-1 and tell them that I could not breathe. I had to listen to the operator, get to the first door, and then unlock the door (before passing out). Then, the cops had to get there in less than a few minutes. Then they had to know what to do when they found out I was not breathing (bag me with oxygen). Then, the EMTs had to come there in a hurry as well. Following that, they did their thing in dealing with my two cardiac arrests and stroke.
I say that almost as an aside, but it’s such a big deal. Two cardiac arrests and a stroke on top of walking pneumonia (non-COVID-related).
In the months after I got back home, I Googled to find anyone else with a similar experience. You want to know how many people I found? None. Nor anyone anywhere close to it. I was looking because I wanted to attend a support group of some kind. There is no one who has had my experience. I am literally one in a billion when it comes to what I went through.
Which, on the one hand, amazing! On the other hand, isolating. I want to be able to tell people the lessons I’ve learned from it, but it’s hard to do so because they don’t have the context. I can’t really advise people to try dying as a way to solve their problems because it’s a high risk/high reward strategy. I don’t know how many people have been able to use it to thrive, so there’s that as well.
The first year of my re-birth, I was just happy to be alive. And marveling about the miracle of it all. I was like a newborn babe wandering around, google-eyed, at everything around me. Every glass of water was delicious and every scoop of ice cream magical. I would look out the window and tear up because the world was so beautiful.
Obviously, this couldn’t last. The second year, I kind of hibernated and stalemated. I wasn’t hyped all the time I was in my first new year. I wasn’t unhappy and deperssed the way I was before my medical crisis, but I wasn’t filled with awe, either. This was not unexpected. One cannot live in a perpetual state of wonder.
The last year has been a shit year. I’ll be frank with you. I have been closer to my pre-crisis mental state of being than I have ever been. Why? for many reasons. One is the world around me. America is in the shitter right now, and I’m not happy that this is what I came back to life for. The last two or three months have been better than the months before, but it’s still a tense and scary situation.
Two, I’ve just had a personally shitty year. Most of it is justirritating minor things one after the other. There has also been a chunky car/money thing, but the worst has been a personal tragedy in late February of this year that I still can’t talk about. It hurts me to my very soul, and while it was expected, it was still heartbreaking.
I know that’s life. Life is filled with ups and downs. The last year just happened to be a personal low for me. In a way, it’s deserved to balance out the one major positive thing that happened to me. The miracle, I mean. On the other hand, that can’t be my one good luck for the rest of my life, can it?
I’m looking for year four to be my year. No more sitting on my ass. No more just waiting for…Godot? To exhale? I’m not even sure what. Life is not what happens to you, but what you make happen. And I’m tired of just half-living my life. I thought that my medical crisis would be my wake-up call, but it hasn’t been. Well, not completely. I have meditated on it and made some mental adjustments, but that hasn’t translated to concrete changes. My mind is nowhere near where it needs to be, but I’m getting there. I’m tired. I will get into more details tomorrow, but I’m done for the day.