“You are a literal walking miracle.” That was what the nurse said when she came to do my weekly at-home checkup after I left the hospital. I understood what she was trying to say, and I came up against it again and again every time I met with a medical person–or just talked to them about it. I get it; I really do. They have to deal with unhappy cases all day long, especially in the ICU. There aren’t many people walking out of there on their own power, sadly. I had a nurse from the ICU who had sat with me while I was unconscious come down to the PCU (Progressive Care Unit) while I was awake so she could talk to me. She had tears in her eyes as she recounted sitting with me while I was unconscious. She said she had to come talk to me while I was awake, which I didn’t mind.
At a certain point, though, I started resenting being called a miracle. It doesn’t see the totality of me, which, again, I understand why my medical team would be focused on it. But it made me feel like that was the end of my story–not the beginning. If what happened to me was a movie, it would end with me waking up to a big swell of music. Then, credits would roll and everyone would go home.
In reality, that’s just the beginning. I’m still alive, living my life. I still have to navigate how to go on when something so monumental had happened to me. How do I bring it up when I meet someone new, for example? I don’t see it as first date information. “Hi, my name is Minna. I do Taiji weapons, video games, and, oh yeah, I died twice last year. You?”
K insists that it’s my life so I get to decide when to bring it up. That’s true, but at the same time, it’s not something that you come across on the regular. In fact, if someone said that to me out of the blue, I’m not sure how I’d react. If it hadn’t happened to me, I mean.
“Oh, I learned how to bake during the pandemic. You?”
“I had pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and a stroke–within twenty minutes. It was a crazy twenty minutes.”
I know it’s not my job to coddle people from reality, but I also don’t want to put myself out there in a thoughtless fashion. To me, these are just the facts of my life. I cognitively know that what happened to me was a one-in-a-million experience. If I think hard about it, then I realize how crazy it was–and, yes, a miracle. Does it affect me on the daily? Not really.
The first month I was home, it was always on my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, in part because, well, it’s pretty incredible. Why did I survive? What made me so special? How did I manage to make it through without rehab? Honestly, aside for some very slight memory issues, there seems to be no lasting effects from what happened to me.
Side Note: Big shout-out to the cops, EMTs, and my medical team. They all did the hell out of their jobs to keep me alive. If they hadn’t done it so quickly and competently, this would be a very different story. Two or three months after I returned home, I did a lot of Googling about what happened to me. That’s my way of dealing with things–by researching the hell out of them.
If the brain is without oxygen, it can start to take damage in five minutes. If that stretches to ten minutes, brain damage is almost inevitable and the chance of survival is dim. Add another five minutes to that (so we’re up to fifteen minutes) and death is almost inevitable. Think about that. I called 911, then fainted in my front hallway. I don’t know how long it took the cops to get there, but I was not breathing when they arrived. That’s why they bagged me (oxygen) until the EMTs arrived. I live in a sleepy little suburb in which nothing ever happens–and I’m grateful for that. That’s the reason the cops were able to get here so quickly.
I cannot thank them enough. The cops, the EMTs, and my medical team. Without them, I would not be alive. Without them, even if I had somehow survived, I would not be as untouched as I am. Without them, well, the road back to ‘normal’ would have been much more difficult.
I want to find a way to thank them. I would like to meet them in person if that were possible, just so I could look them in the eye as I thanked them. I know all of them were just doing their job, but for that night, their job meant saving a life.
Anyway, hearing that I’m a miracle makes me feel as if I’m a symbol more than a person. Saying that me surviving is a miracle? I can heartily agree with that. Saying I’M a miracle? Nah, son. Is this nitpicking? Maybe. Do I care? Hell, no. It’s my life and I can say what I want about it. Besides, there’s a big difference between saying me being alive is a miracle and me being a miracle. The former is an event whereas the later is, well, a person. It renders me one-dimensional in a way that I don’t appreciate.
I’m alive. I’m still going. That’s kinda the point. I didn’t die–well, not permanently, anyway. So I don’t want that moment to be crystallized and spray-painted in gold. I have plans to do so many things now that I have my bonus days. Many of them have to do with writing because that’s my bread and butter. I am thinking about dating again, though that’s not a pressing matter. We’re still at the tail end of the pandemic; I don’t want to rush into anything. I need to find someone(s) who can accept what happened to me last September with relative equanimity. Someone who will understand it’s a big deal without making it a really big deal. There have to be people out there like that; I just haven’t found them yet.