Time is weird. This is not a groundbreaking statement, but it astounds me how true it is. We all know that time seems faster the older you get. I’ve heard it explained that it’s because when you’re a kid, a year is, say, one-fifth your lifespan. That’s a huge chunk. When you’re thirty, though, it’s one-thirtieth of your lifetime, which isn’t as big. That’s why waiting for Christmas when you’re six or seven seems like forever whereas when you’re a parent, the time between Christmases can be distressingly short.
That makes some sense and I can buy it to a certain extent. However, it doesn’t explain how time can fold and expand like an accordion. Or how it can appear to be passing both quickly and slowly at the same time.
It’s been 7 1/2 weeks since I left the hospital. Ian and I were speculating when I would stop using weeks and go to months instead. He said probably three months. That had been the number in my brain, but I said at the time that maybe 2 months. And I feel like that might be truer because I’m almost there and I’m tired of counting in weeks.
More to the point, I cannot believe it’s been almost two months since I came home from the hospital. I only spent two weeks in the hospital! One of those weeks was me being unconscious, so it was harder or everyone else than it was on me. When I talk to my loved ones about that week, I get a taste of what they went through. I, on the other hand, just laid there and didn’t do a damn thing.
That’s not true. I did fight to stay alive, but I don’t remember any of that. Oh, and there was that time in the very beginning when I died twice and came back twice. It reminds me of my second serious boyfriend, first serious relationship in college. He broke up with me twice and came back to me twice so when he broke up with me for a third time, I naturally expected him to come back to me again. He did not and it devastated me. I feel the same about death now. I fought back twice and won so now I think I can’t die!
That’s a lie. What it’s done is make me more aware of my mortality. I literally died. Twice. Let that marinate in your brain. My heart stopped twice on the way to the hospital. The EMTs shocked it back into beating twice along with applying an Epi pen once.
Let me take a moment to shout them out. The EMTs, I mean. They get so little cred in the grand scheme of things. We’re told to appreciate the frontline workers (and we definitely should!), but they rarely get named. I would not be here without them. Or the cops who bagged me (oxygen) when I called 911, to be frank. There are so many people who had a hand in keeping me alive, I cannot possibly thank them all. I do want to do something for Regions Hospital somewhere down the line, however. Before I landed in it, I never knew it existed. Now, I am filled with admiration for all they do.
I think about it now and again. I was in the hospital for two weeks, which isn’t that long for how serious my condition was. Of course, I have no idea how many people took care of me while I was unconscious. The week I was awake, however, I had so many people taking care of me. My team consisted of 2-4 people at all times (nurses, patient care assistants (PCAs), vital stats takers, and more). By all times, I mean 24/7. I believe the shifts were eight hours long. This is my recollection of how things happened.
What did they do for me? They turned me in bed when I needed it. They changed my clothes when necessary and my bedding. They took my stats. They put different tubes/masks when necessary as well. They changed my briefs when I soiled them. They literally wiped my ass when I took a shit. They gave me boosts in bed (again, literal as well as emotional) and they treated me with dignity and respect.
One thing I really appreciated about my team was the diversity I saw on it. At least half of the team members were of color/immigrants, which really lifted my spirits. There were several Asian people and I got to joke with two of them that I was going to celebrate Gangnam Style once I got out of the hospital. They teased me for reaching so far back, but it was fun. There were people from the Caribbean islands, from Africa, and from the Philippines. There were young people and there were old people. There were men and women and maybe nonbinary people! Thee was at least one woman who had relationships with other women (we were chatting and she mentioned a female partner).
I cannot tell you how good it made me feel to look at my team and see an array of diversity. It made me feel more comfortable than if they were all the same. I believe that diversity helps a team in intangible ways, but not least because the people who go into the hospital are not all the same.
Side Note: One little talked-about fact of medicine is that most of the studies are done one white men. Therefore, many of the conclusions don’t hold true for people of other genders, races, etc. For example, Asian people need less meds than do white people. I learned this several years ago. My mother told the docs that I didn’t need as much sedation meds as they had given me (probably), and it was true. I didn’t. Part of the reason I wasn’t waking up was because they dosed me too heavily. Once thy started scaling back, well, the results are that I’m awake and home for almost two months.
And there it is. Not only am I counting in months, but in almost months. I remember waking up from being unconscious and thinking that every day was a gift. Hey, I had died twice so I was living in bonus time! I distinctly remember saying to myself to hold onto that gratitude. I made a special note of it. Do I still feel that gratitude now? Ahhhhhh, not really. And that’s how time works. It’s really difficult to sustain an out-of-normal emotion for a great length of time. Because if it remained for too long, it would become, well, normal. It would lose what made it special.
It’s really strange. When I went into the hospital, I was–well, unconscious. When I woke up, though, I was very aware that I should be dead. That kind of knowledge does a number on your brain. At least on my brain. On the one hand, it makes every day I have a bonus. On the other, it makes me well aware that I don’t want to waste the gift.
My friends tell me that my being alive is enough, but I don’t feel that way. As I’ve written about before, I don’t question why the two cardiac arrests and the stroke happened to me–I just questioned why I came back basically intact. So many medical personnel told me that it was a miracle (still don’t like that word) and two nurses from the ICU (one who sat with me while I was unconscious) wanted to meet me when I was awake. That puts some kind of pressure on me! I know it’s not what they meant, but I couldn’t help thinking that with all that hype, I had to live up to it. I mean, it would be a damn shame for me to waste the bonus days, wouldn’t it?
I know that’s not a great way of looking at things, but I can’t help it. I fucking died twice. And came back twice. In order to make that meaningful, I have to do something with…this.
*gestures vaguely at the world around me*
Is that a trap? It might be. Taiji would tell me to take each moment as it comes and not worry about the future. I try to attend to that, but it’s difficult. I feel the need to do something exceptional, which makes me freeze.
I need to get past that. In a month or two, I’m going to start looking into getting a new therapist, one who specifically deals with survivor’s guilt, but I’ll save that for another post.
I went into the hospital on September 3rd. I was unconscious for a week and in the Progressive Care Unit (PCU) for a week. Two weeks. Then back home. Two weeks, one unconscious, is such a short amount of time. That is a mind-fuck as well. How can something that happened in two weeks have such a huge impact on me? That’s another thing to talk about with my future therapist. I’ll try to shelve it until then.