I’m thinking about the next step in my life. This is the fifth year of my re-birth, and it’s time for me to start thinking about what I want to do with my life. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I had been given the miracle of life, and I was so grateful for it. I will say, I was high as a kite while I was in the hospital, so everything was absoluutely amazing.
My brother ribbed me because I was fixated on ice water. Any nurse who came into my room, I asked them to bring me a glass of ice water. I’m talking several times a day so that by the end of the day, I had five to ten glasses lined up on my lap tray (not on my lap, though. Like an airplane tray that is raised and goes ever your lap) with varying levels of melting ice.
My brother laughed and told me that I did not have to thank each nurse for bringing me water because it was just their job. I retorted that it wasn’t their job to bring me ice water every two minutes. I didn’t think to say it, but als, even if it was their job, there’s nothing wrong with thanking them for doing it.
Side note: That water was fucking incredible. I raved about it to anyone who would listen. When I got back home, I raved about it on Twitter. I had people agreeing with me, and one woman who’s a nurse said it was because of the specific ice chips offered in hospitals. She said that she had colleagues who went in on their days off, specifically to fill a cooler with ice. K told me that their adult child had commented how great the ice was when they stayed in the hospital, too. So it’s not just me!
Best thing in the hospital by a country mile. The second-best thing was the oxygen tube I had to wear in my nose. About a decade ago, oxygen bars became a popular thing. I would see them around town and laugh because the idea of paying for oxygen to breathe was just ridiculous. Once I had pure ox (as I called it) coursing through my veins, I got it. I felt like I could do anything with the pure ox I was getting. It was sooooo good that I joked I was going to smuggle it out with me.
When I first woke up, my medical team told me that I was probably going to have to do rehab for a year or two. The occupational therapist who told me this made it clear by the tone of her voice that it could be well over that.
In fact, everyone emphasized that it was a slow journey. When I got back home, I watched a doctor from the Mayo Clinic talk about how stroke victims had to forget ‘normal’ and focus on what they could now do. It was very clear that his message was, “You are not going to be anywhere near what you used to be, and you’re going to have to accept that.”
Several days after I woke up, my medical talked to me about what I needed to do after I left the hospital. They suggested that it might be a good thing for me to go to a rehab facility before going home.
Two days later, they were discharging me and telling me to get the hell out of there. Ok, not that bluntly, but pretty close. This was during the worst of the pandemic, and they were short rooms. The nurse who was prepping me to leave rattled off a bunch of things to me as she tried to hurry me along. Remember, I was high as a kite and had just woken up from a weeklong coma. I had no idea what she was saying, especially, as she was talking in medicalese.
In the first year I was home (especially once I was alone with my cat), I was just so grateful to be alive. I was keenly aware that I should be dead, and everything was amazing to me. Again, it might have been the drugs, but I was feeling so good about myself. I’ve always hated my body my whole life for several reasons, but after my medical crisis, you couldn’t say shit to me about it because it was the reason I survived. Well, one of the reasons.
I got new glasses a few weeks after getting out of the hospital, and the frames were unlike any I had ever had before. They were plastic and cat-eye shape, and had polka dots all over them. They were black and white based on different parts of the frame (black on some, white on the others), and there was a heart on each ‘hand’. They were brand namme glasess, which is also something I would never have done before. They are cute as fuck, and I’m sad that I have to get new glasses soon.
I hate having my picture taken, but for the first week after I returned home, I was snapping selfies left and right as I did my hair in cute ‘dos. I normally wore it in a high, sloppy bun, but I tried several different ‘dos. Two ponies that I then braided. Two ponies that I then wound around the ‘stem’ and secured with scrunchies, a la Chun-Li. A high, tight bun. The hairstyle I finally landed on was a high pony that I then half-braided. It’s how I wear my hair now, at least during the day. I wear it in a sloppy high bun at night so I can sleep easily on it (because I sleep on my side).
Every year since then, I have started sliding back to the means, which means that life is much less magical and awe-inducing. Now, I’m actually pretty pissed at what America has become, and I have a hard time believing I came back for this. I don’t hold out hope that it’s going to get better any time soon; in fact, I bet it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse.
That’s it for now. I did not talk about my plans for the future at all. I will try to get to that tomorrow.