Update on health: I am at home and resting. The situation is serious
and I am taking it so, putting my recovery first in importance. I still have
the PICC line in to give meds, vitamins, fluids and nutrition. I will wear it
for however long it takes depending on how well things go. I am still dizzy,
exhausted and generally weak. So I am taking it real easy and actually asking
for help, which is tough for me. I am required to be connected to the IV full
time so I feel like I'm under house arrest with my nurse visiting regularly.
But thank goodness I am at home and that is way better than spending this time
in the hospital. I enjoy the visits of friends but in small doses for now, as
my ability to project an upbeat exterior has a short duration.
It is strange to think it was only seven days ago when
everything stopped. Due to complications with medications my heart stopped and my respiration stopped, my husband Jeff pulled me to the floor and preformed CPR until the ambulance arrived and the paramedics showed up. Jeff is a trained combat medic and if he had not I me at the time I would have died, without any doubt. The paramedics confirmed that he saved my life. Sometime later woke in the hospital. I have flashes of memories of the ceiling in the ambulance and men in uniform screaming at me to breathe, but it is all a blur. This is not my first time to almost die, in fact I "coded" and been revived 4 times in the past 10 years. [I will talk about what dying and reviving does to your perception in a later post]
Jeff has been
amazing this past week. He did not miss a beat in helping me do almost
everything. I think he is afraid to be away from me for longer than a few minutes in case I stop breathing and fall over dead again. We went through shock for a bit, which was the expected reaction
to, "holy crap you almost died" . . . "again". Now we are
settling into "how do we cope with this" mode. Funny, how it is
always in the moments when you come really close to losing it all, that you
begin to understand what it is that you have to lose.
Going through any medical condition is difficult; there is
the pain, the fear, the trying to hide it and the looming unknown. But most
people don't realize that the worst part of a serious medical issue is how
alone you feel. You can be surrounded by people: doctors, nurses, family,
friends, other patients and still be utterly alone. I learn to grab the small
bits of humanity wrapped in the colors of a flower arrangement, the humor of a
card, the ice cream even when I can't eat it, the necklace some one made by
hand, the offer to help me wash my hair, holding my hand and sometimes just a
comment on Facebook. It is those gestures, which reach across the divide and
give real comfort. It is not always the medicine that keeps you going but many
times it is the will.
No one ever promised me that life would be easy or fair, and
so far it has not been either. But it is in the hard moments where I have the
greatest chance of connecting to a deeper purpose in life. As many of my friends
point out in their comments last week to, "stop doing this" or
"oh no not again" or "enough with the dying already", I
have had a lot of those 'meaning of life' moments. I am blessed to be here, to
have awakened under another clear blue sky and to have such wonderful friends
and family around me.
Thank you to my beloved tribe and to everyone who has
visited, called, emailed, commented and kept me in their thoughts. I don't say
it nearly enough how much the simple words of, "hope you are feeing better"
goes in actually making me feel better. It is the little gifts of sharing which
add up to such a monumental thing. My will is that monumental thing, and it is
made up of all those small kindnesses.
I learned a strong lesson last week that without the care
and love of my family and friends that I would not be here. It reminded me to
say, "thank you", and that, "I love you" while I still can.
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