Six months ago was the worst night of my life. One that will be etched in my brain forever, even though I was unconscious when it happened, I’ll never forget the retelling of it by my brother. Nor the moment when I opened my eyes, angry, confused, and afraid. I was ready to fight whatever needed fighting–and I was sure that someone did, indeed, need fighting.
I spent two weeks in the hospital, one week unconscious and another conscious. That is really what changed my life–the second week, I mean. You could argue that the cluster of medical traumas changed my life; you would not be wrong. But I was not awake for that and have no memory of it so I can’t really speak to it. All I know about that comes from my brother, which is a strange feeling. The fact that there’s a whole week of my life missing is a strange feeling, as a matter of fact. For the first few weeks I was out of the hospital, I was obsessed with that week and the fact that I would never know what really happened to me. I mean, I know the basics–walking non-COVID-related pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and a stroke–but I don’t know the details. It really bothered me for a couple of weeks because, well, I think that’s normal,, but also because I have a mania in my need to know. I grew up with two unreliable narrators as parents so it’s my tendency to want to have everything in writing. The fact that all this happened to me without me even knowing about it doesn’t sit well. At all. Reading the journal entries my brother wrote on the Caring Bridge website is so weird. They’re about me, but I cannot relate to them at all. When he talks about me being on ice to protect my internal organs, it feels as if he’s talking about someone else.
Side Note: I have said this before, but I’ll say it again. I am so fucking lucky that I was taken to Regions Hospital and that they had an open bed. They are the leading heart center in Minnesota and recognized nationally for it. Therapeutic Hypothermia (or Targeted Temperature Management) is not a universally-accepted treatment for cardiac arrest so I’m lucky that Regions is one that does it. They lowered my temperature to protect my brain and lungs and then gradually increased the temps until I was back to normal. My brother wrote that I was fighting the breathing tube when they tried to raise my temperature.