Yes. Yes, I do.
I have to believe in miracles because as one of the nurses who visited me at home said, I am literally a walking miracle.
I was talking to my brother yesterday about what happened to me. It was in the context of how to talk casually upon meeting someone for the first time after this happened. I don’t want to say, “Yeah, I died twice. You?”
Side Note: My brother and I have an ongoing argument about whether I died or not. He doesn’t think I actually died because one definition of death is that all vital functions permanently desist. I believe I did actually die because my heart stopped, twice. Also, my heart doc said I can say that so I’ll listen to my heart doc.
I said I would probably say something like, “I was in the hospital for two weeks with something serious, but I’m fine now.” My brother laughed and said that was underplaying it a bit. Which, yes, it was, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to bust out the full truth on the first meeting. My brother said I could say something like, “I almost died and –“, but that’s not how I want to start a new friendship. Not that I’ll be going many places any time soon. But I’m looking to the future.
K gently reminded me that while I don’t have to talk about it if I don’t want to, it is part of my story and I shouldn’t feel I can’t talk about it. She’s hit the nail on the head. I feel like it’s verboten because…I’m not sure why. I think it’s partly part of my family legacy of keeping everything a secret. It’s also because it feels almost showoff-y to bring it up. Like, “What did I do in the past few months? Got pneumonia, passed out, had two cardiac arrests and a stroke as well.” That’s a conversation stopper. What are you supposed to say to that? K maintains that anyone I want to be friends with will be interested and not freaked out by it. But I would be slightly freaked out if someone said that to me when I first met them. It’s really serious stuff, even though it isn’t in my day-to-day.
Anyway, my brother and I were talking about the different scenarios he and the doctors discussed before I woke up. The doctors were warning him about brain damage and me not being able to walk. The stroke I had was golf ball size and affected the area that controls motor functions, both gross and fine. They talked about me probably needing months and months of rehab if I woke up, heavy emphasis on if. Because the underlying message was that I wasn’t going to wake up. I was supposed to die as my brother points out to me time and time again. I know he was actually thinking about planning a funeral.
What actually happened wasn’t even on anyone’s radar as a possibility. I had vision issues in which everyone’s faces were melted and I couldn’t read fonts; I had a slight tremor in my middle finger of my left hand; I had short-term memory issues and sometimes could not remember a word; and, my stamina was shite. Other than that, though, I was fine. I really and truly was. I passed all my tests with flying colors.
Interestingly, my brother told me last night that the initial yes-and-no questioning was not so much to find out what I remembered of the events, but to see if I was following what they were saying. Apparently, my cognition was fine even though I remember nearly nothing of what happened. Actually, I did not remember anything.
Anyway, all the therapists I met, including speech, occupational, and physical (plus memory, which I don’t know what it falls under) said I was fine and I was so proud when the physical therapist said on the second day that she had nothing left to teach me. Because according to my brother, their job is to teach me to walk again, not to walk well. And I could already walk on the second or third day I woke up. By the time I talked to her, I could walk to the end of the hallway and back without the walker. I never really needed the walker to walk–it was just nice to rest on it now and again.
When I was in the PCU (Progressive Care Unit), one of the nurses who sat with me in the ICU came down to meet me. She told me she had sat with me while I was unconscious and she wanted to meet me when I was awake. She had tears in her eyes and I thanked her for sitting with me while I was unconscious. Later, another nurse from the ICU was subbing on the PCU floor and also had to meet me because I was a miracle.
I get that; I really do. It must be so hard to be an ICU nurse because you lose most of your patients. The ones you don’t lose come back in pretty bad shape. Someone like me truly is a miracle. I don’t begrudge that. I’ve even toyed with the idea of a children’s story about a miracle girl and her miracle cat (because Shadow was supposed to die at one point, too, and miraculously recovered). Or a miracle kid and their miracle cat.
I didn’t mind the miracle moniker at first. I knew I was one when I was able to digest what truly happened to me. I should have died. I was told that many times, mostly by my brother. Barring that, I should have not been able to walk and had brain damage when coming back. Now, two-and-a-half months later, I’m nearly back to ‘normal’, including stamina. I’m not quite there, but everyone who knows me has marveled at how much the same I appear now as to before I was in the hospital. My brother likes to joke that I’m even funnier now and maybe it’s the brain damage. He’s allowed to make that joke because he knows me and was my strength during the darkest period of my life.
The miracle moniker started wearing thing, however. Near the end of my hospital stay, one of my nurses was someone who was usually on the ICU floor but was floating on the PCU floor for a shift. She said she specifically asked to be assigned to me because of what happened to me. That was really weird. I was like some kind of rock star for something over which I had no control. I mean, I get it. I’m the rare bird. The 1-in-a-million happenstance. I should not be alive. I should most definitely not be alive with no lasting damage. I’ve had appointments with both my heart doc and my head doc, and both have given me the clean bill of health. All my lab results are good or acceptable. I have one more EEG and one more heart doc visit, but the heart monitor results were fine as well. No afibrillations or irregular heart rhythms. The last thing my head doc was to go out and live my life.
The thing is, I have to still live my life. If the story ended with me waking up in the hospital, then, yeah, we could say, “What a miracle!” and be done with it. But I have to continue on and being a miracle doesn’t really get me much in the day to day. I don’t mind any longer being called a miracle because I recognize what happened to me was, indeed, miraculous. I just don’t want it to be the end of my story because I’m still living my life. I consider these my bonus days and I can’t wait to see what I do with them.