One thing that I have difficulty with is accepting that both everything has changed and nothing has changed at the same time. When I recite what happened to me, a sense of surrealness comes over me. How could that have happened and I’m still standing to talk about it? Once again, walking (non-COVID-related) pneumonia, leading me to passing out and collapsing. Two cardiac arrests and an ischemic stroke. Within twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes. Such a short amount of time to completely change my life. Twenty minutes in which I died twice and came back to life twice. Twenty minutes in which my life was hanging on the balance. Not just those twenty minutes, though. My life hung in the balance for a week after that. It’s all so strange because I was unconscious for all that. My brother never calls it a coma because the doctors didn’t call it that.
I looked it up. A coma is when someone is unconscious and not responsive to external stimuli. That was me so I guess we can call it a coma. My mother insists that I listened when she told me to move my extremities. But the doctors/nurses said that wasn’t conscious on my part, but involuntary. I usually just say I was unconscious, which works as well. But in looking it up on Mayo’s website, they say a coma only lasts a few weeks. After that it starts edging into a vegetative state. It surprises me because I tend to think of a coma as months so I thought my one week didn’t qualify because it was too short. I never thought there might be an upper limit to the length of a coma.
I was out for a week. Unconscious, I mean. My brother was thinking about whether to pull the plug or not when I woke up. You could not write it any better, honestly. My brother was on his way to the hospital to talk about it when he got a call from the doctor saying I had awakened.
Side note: I have commented several times about how much my brother did for me during the dark days. I could not have made it through without him and he did it without a single complaint. I can’t thank him enough for it and the one thing I’m most grateful for is that he didn’t have to make that decision–pulling the plug on me, I mean.
We’ve talked several times about what happened to me and what he had to do during that time. He’s been even-keeled about it, even joking about things that most people would find not funny (like death). My brother is probably on the spectrum (as is all of my nuclear family, really, including me, to some degree) and is not one to talk about feelings very much. The only time I saw him get emotional when we talked about my experience was when he was describing the decision to pull the plug or not. He knew that I would want him to pull it because I’ve been quite vocal about not wanting to be a vegetable.
He asked me what I would have done if, say, Ian was in my position. I said I would pull the plug because that’s what he would want. But, at the same time, it’s hard because I woke up. I have to take that into account, but my brother couldn’t at the time. He asked my parents what they wanted. My mother knew I would want the plug pulled and respected that. My father, on the other hand, was adamant about doing anything to keep my body alive. That surprised the hell out of me because he doesn’t care about me as a person, but in thinking about it, it’s more because he has an abject fear of death. It’s the worst thing in the world for him and he projects that onto everyone around him.
I said that he could just ignore what my father said, which was when he got emotional. He said in his position, he had to consider what everyone wanted. He added that his sister-in-law had been in a coma for several months before waking up. She’s had brain damage, but she enjoys life and has a productive one. My brother’s voice got emotional as he was talking about this, which made me realize how emotional he was about it. That was the only time he lost his cool and it was a symbol of how stressed he was about having to make that decision.
I will be ever grateful that he was spared that decision. He had to do so much during that week and everything was on his shoulders. I can’t imagine having to make that decision for a loved one. It was yet another time I was lucky and I’m very aware of it. I can’t imagine the emotional rollercoaster my brother went through during that first week. Finding out I was in the hospital and unresponsive. Finding out I had two cardiac arrests and a stroke. Having to contemplate pulling the plug on me. Being the point man for all the medical decisions. Doing all this while he was also doing his day job and taking care of his family.
It’s been a little over four months since the original incidents. September 3rd, 2021 will forever be burned in my mind as the day I died twice and came back to life again (twice). Everything changed because I should not be alive. And yet, nothing changed because I’m sitting on my couch with my cat snoozing on my legs as I madly type on my keyboard. Which I’m extremely hard on, by the way. My keyboards, I mean. I have cherry switches and they’re supposed to last ten years. My last keyboard lasted two. Which means I’m exceptionally hard on my keyboards. They are supposed to last 50 million keystrokes. If that’s the case, then I’m typing 25 million keystrokes a year? That seems like a lot.
Four months since my life changed irrevocably. I’m trying to find a support group for people who have survived cardiac arrests. It’s not easy to do because, well, most people die from them. And the ones who survive have difficulty doing things such as talking and walking. I need a group for people who didn’t just survived, but thrived. I am better now than I have ever been. My stamina is even better than before. I’m doing more Taiji every day and will soon go back to Taiji classes (on Zoom).
2022 is going to be different than 2021. Only time will tell if it’s better or worse.