It’s almost the end of 2021 and it has been a really wild year for me. Not just because of the ongoing pandemic/endemic (COVID), but because I spent two weeks in the hospital (non-COVID-related). I still don’t know how to bring that up, by the way. It’s not something to drop into casual conversation, but it’s also a big part of my year–at least the latter half. I may not be consciously thinking about it, but it’s in the back of my mind, tickling my brain.
I should be dead. Again, I don’t consciously think about it much, but it’s there. The fact that i should not have survived what I went through. When I met with the hospital chaplain, I reiterated what was rattling through my brain. I have never once questioned why this all happened to me (the medical trauma stuff) because there’s no reason I should be exempt from it. What I DO ask is why I came back practically unscathed. That’s the part that gets me. I’ve heard and read enough stories about people who went through something similar and came back in much rougher shape.
I know I’m going to have to find a therapist to talk about this with because I have survivor’s guilt. Intellectually, I know that what happened is the luck of the draw for the most part. I do believe that having practiced Taiji for fifteen years or so did help as did all the love and support that came pouring out to me while I was unconscious, but in the end, it was luck that allowed me, three-and-a-half months later to be unscathed by the experience–at least physically.
My friends and family have said that they are astonished at how much the same I am as I was before. I mean, they were told to expect me to be totally different if and when I woke up. I might not be able to talk or walk, or if I could do either, it might be in a very limited capacity. In fact, there was an emphasis on how I would need months of rehab if not years. There was talk of me going to a rehab facility after leaving the hospital and before going home.
This is what the doctors told my brother. Then, the second week I was in the hospital–while I was awake–I did a series of tests, ranging from occupational to speech to memory to walking. They did a whole battery of tests to see where I was at. I got satisfactory and above on all of them. My proudest moment was the second time I saw the physical therapist and she said she had nothing more for me. I had been on lockdown up to that point because I was very rebellious about pressing the button to call the nurses. It was misplaced ego, for which I apologize to all the nurses and aides. Anyway, the PT lifted the lockdown (an actual alarm that sounded if I tried to get out of bed on my own) and said that I was free to go wherever I want.
The second or third day I was awake, I managed to walk down the hallway, up the stairs, and back again. She gave me a few pointers on how to walk better, but not much. Remember that I was high out of my mind during those assessments. I was so pumped full of drugs, I was feeling no pain. But I’m assuming that didn’t help my actual motor abilities.
It’s still hard to wrap my brain around the fact that I was supposed to die. Barring that, I was supposed to be come back with severe limitations to what I could do. The fact that I’m not only back but at least as good as before is amazing. I kept using that word in the hospital to describe everything from the ice water to the–well, the ice water. Look. It was incredible. It was the best ice water I’d ever drank in my life. Plus, I had been unconscious for a week so I was pretty parched.
I’m alive. I’m probably going to see 2022. That was not a given when I was unconscious in the hospital three-and-a-half months ago. I am not one to be reflective at the end of the year, but I can’t help it this year. I’m supposed to be dead. That’s not something you easily dismiss or get past. It’s a hard stop, especially when it happened twice.
Side note: This is by far the weirdest thing for me–all this shit that happened that I don’t remember because I was unconscious. The pneumonia doesn’t surprise me because I’ve had bronchial issues all my life. I get bronchitis on the regular–or I did before the pandemic. I hadn’t gotten it at all during the pandemic. Somehow, I got pneumonia–I don’t know how. I may never know how. That’s one of the things about the whole experience that will just remain a mystery. I only went out once or twice the two weeks before it happened. Cubs twice and the pharmacy once. My brother came over the Monday before I went into the hospital. but he never showed any sign of pneumonia. In the hospital, it was clarified that it was non-COVID-related pneumonia so there’s that as well.
Side note II: My mother had a hard time accepting that we will probably never know how I got pneumonia. More to the point, we would not be able to prevent it from happening again. That was at the heart of the matter–she’s a control freak and wants to be able to prevent it from happening again. I can understand that, but I knew instantly that there was no way to guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
I finally had to tell my mother bluntly that I was going to die one day. That was at the heart of her fear–that I was going to die. Which, yes, I was. I wanted her to be happy that I hadn’t died on that fateful night and that I had all these bonus days to live. I knew that was asking too much from her, but I couldn’t help but hope.
It’s the weirdest thing. Before my medical trauma, I was a fearful person in general. I had an intense fear of death that went away after I actually died. From my point of view, I wasn’t and then I was. My mother asked if there was any bright light when I died. Nope. There was nothing–and then there was something. It really was that simple. It’s a lot like when I sleep, actually.
In the first month of recovery, I was focused on recovery. I know that sounds obvious, but it was really time-consuming. Even though I didn’t have that much damage, there was still enough to make me have to concentrate on getting better. In addition, the things that were wrong with me–temporarily–were things that affected my day-to-day life. Such as my inability to read fonts. That was the biggest problem and one that corrected itself over a week. Maybe two weeks. It was frustrating, though, because I spend so much time on the internet. Not being able to read internet fonts was frustrating. Still, I was hopped up on drugs so I wasn’t feeling too much pain.
Now, I’m back to reading as well as I used to–better, actually, because I have new glasses. Still not perfect because my eyes are getting older, but my computer glasses make it easier for me to read all kinds of fonts. Except the fonts used on ingredient lists on food stuff. Why is the font on ingredient lists so fucking hard to read? Like, would it kill you just to use Times New Roman? And in something bigger than size 4 would be nice.
I wanted to give myself six months more to recover from my medical events. I had hoped my parents would be chill with it, especially as I have enough money to carry me through those six months. But, no. They couldn’t even give me the two months after leaving the hospital before they started in on my future. Look, I wasn’t going to HAVE a future three months ago, let alone plan for one.
Now that it seems like I’m going to have a future, I will eventually start thinking about what I’m going to do with it–just not right now.