Back From The Brink of Death

It's taken me a while to feel able to write about this.  The reason is that it was a truly frightening experience.  I literally came very, very close to death.

For approximately three weeks, I'd been wheezing and feeling exhausted.  But we had just adopted to rescued dogs in early November and I thought my body might have to adjust to having dog dander around again.  However, I'd not started wheezing when we first had them.  And the exhaustion?  Well, it was almost Christmas.  I'd been busy at home getting ready for the holidays.  At work, December indicates tax season is right around the corner, so I was working a lot of hours trying to get us ready.

A moment of truth here.  I'm a bit of a workaholic.  Okay, I'm a serious workaholic. It's been my MO all my life.  I can work most people under the table.  Well, prior to this illness I could.  Now I don't know what the future holds in that regard. But in December of 2015, I was working A LOT of hours at my job.

On December 22nd, I started to really feel bad.  I ached everywhere, was exhausted to the point I knew I could not work that day, and then nausea started.  I called the doctor's office to see if they had anything open but it was right away and I hadn't really gotten out of bed yet.  On top of being a workaholic, I am a clean freak.  No way would I present myself at the doctors looking like a bus had just run over me.  I put it off and told the receptionist I would call the next day, a Saturday if I didn't feel better.  But that night I truly regretted that decision.  I spent the whole night throwing up off and on with little snippets of sleep in between.  I was really sick.

What I am most thankful for is that my husband, a truck driver, was home.  He took care of me and took me to the doctor's office that Saturday morning.  He had wanted to take me to the Emergency Room during the night, but I am all about saving a buck here and there when I think it's unnecessary. I should have heeded his advice.  We often don't realize just how ill we are, even when those around us see it.

On the morning of December 23, 2015, we arrived at the doctor's office.  He immediately put me on oxygen but he could not bring up my oxygen level, which was at 70%.  He called an ambulance and they put forced air oxygen on me.  They were truly wonderful EMT's. They reassured me, the lone female in the group held my hand because, by that time, I'd become very frightened about what was happening to me. And they got me to the hospital I'd chosen quickly, Parker Adventist Hospital.  And here again, I must say they were wonderful.  Well, they saved my life.

In the emergency room, I remember a nurse holding my hand for a while as they explained to me that I was very sick and they needed to get me a room. I had pneumonia. Not only that, it was staph pneumonia and I had sepsis. My body wanted to shut down.  I heard my husband tell them my vomit had looked like blood and I hadn't eaten for at least 40 or more hours.  I was just too sick.

This is where my memory fades and I only have them here and there.  They had to intubate me, which meant I could no longer breathe on my own. The ventilator would be doing that for me - for sixteen very long days. A great blessing and a curse came to be that they put you on drugs that cause your memory to fade.  Of course, you do not want to recall the horror of being intubated.  But the drugs don't fade completely away after.  I have struggled a bit with my memory since then.  They also put you on paralyzing drugs and tie your hands down to prevent you from struggling or tearing out the ventilator tube.

I don't recall being taken to a room in ICU but I do remember some of the very kind and loving nurses that cared for me.  One was named John and though I cannot explain what it was about him, he made me feel safe.  He was a big man and he would hold my hand and talk to me. Having your hand held when you are frightened can be a huge comfort.  More than I ever would have expected it to be. He told me he had been in the military and although I don't recall his rank, I thought to myself, "what a gentle man for having been......" whatever the rank was, which I knew at the time. There was another nurse who I called Carolyn, but that was not her name!  I think it was something similar to that.  Ultimately, she left a day or two before I was moved to a regular room to go to her home state and care for her ailing mother and brother.  She was such a sweet woman and helped me get through the two-day wait when the doctor had said he might have to do a tracheotomy after the removal of the ventilator.  That was terrifying to me and I wondered if I would ever be able to do my job again; if I would ever have any semblance of my previous life after this illness.  I had difficulty sleeping and kept asking if I was breathing okay.  She always reassured me.  She spoke softly to me and reminded me of how strong I'd been to have come through what I had.  Listening to her as I calmed and fell asleep, I recalled her voice during the whole ordeal.  They give you a sponge bath and dry shampoo every other day and I remembered her washing my back and saying, "doesn't that feel wonderful, the warm water on your back?"  And it did.

One more nurse that stood out for me was Rosa.  She would dry shampoo my hair and then take the time to braid it so it would be out of my face and away from the ventilator tube.  She was kind and made me feel well cared for when she worked.  She was also the trigger of a calming aspect to some nightmares I had, a side effect of the medications I was on.  I do not normally have nightmares.  My sleep, in general, consists of several awakenings during the night when I look at the clock and then roll back over to sleep.  But while in ICU, I had many nightmares, but only two or three that I recall clearly.

When we are stressed, our minds help us release some of that intensity by allowing us to have nightmares.  That was what my mind did for me.  At one point, I dreamt that the hospital was trying to kill me.  I didn't know what it was that I knew, but it was something I wasn't supposed to know. Who to rescue me but my brother who had rescued me from whippings as a child.  He played football in high school and college, had planned to go pro, was scouted by the Broncos, Bengals, and Dolphins.  He even had signed on with the Broncos but trashed his knee in a college game toward the end and was given the choice of playing for a year, at best, and being a cripple for the rest of his life or finding something else to do with himself.  He chose the latter and became a Special Education teacher for high school-aged kids and he coached.  So when I was in trouble, and needed to escape but was too weak to do so myself, who should rescue me in my dream but Kevin.  I told him what was happening and he scooped me up and tucked me under his arm like he would carry a football and ran. We ran all the way to safety.  A nightmare that ended in a positive way.    

But one nightmare repeated itself again and again.  It was about "the Calabra".  I have no idea where the name came from but this was what they were called.  They lived in an underground cavern below the hospital.  Somehow, I ended up in that cavern several times.  They were giant spiders made of jewels and clicked as they moved across the wall.  I don't recall ever seeing one on the floor, always on the walls.  They would watch me, but not really approach me.  This seemed even more threatening than if they had chased me.  As I tried to leave, seeing a light at one end of a large tunnel-like area, I started to pass what I perceived to be the "mother" of them all.  She was not particularly large and she was not jeweled in any way.  She was gray and looked like she could easily be smooshed.  But that was not my thought.  I was just afraid of her.  She smiled with a closed mouth that spread largely across her face, a round shape attached to a round body that had many, many legs.  She began to unfurl them slowly, hundreds of them.  Once she was done, a smaller face that looked exactly like hers was contained within.  Suddenly, it made a sound.  "Nee, nee, nee.  Nee, nee, nee" and I ran from the cavern as quickly as I could.

Ironically, when I finally left the hospital on January 18th, I was barely able to walk or stand.  And could not at all without support. I was sent to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Aurora to recover and spent 10 long days working as hard as I could to come home.  I did, using a walker for a few days, then a cane for about one month.  Finally, I am walking on my own, though still suffering from weakness everywhere that I can not seem to improve much.

That brings us to the continuing issues of my recovery.  I have frozen vocal cords from the intubation tube. Although they extubated me within a week, I was not able to breathe on my own.  So I was reintubated for an additional ten days.  The vocal cords are paralyzed close together so while I am able to speak, I have a hard time breathing. Our vocal cords separate as we take in air when they are working normally, but mine doesn't.  Due to this, I am unable to walk long distances without a cane and rest.  I struggle to breathe when I move around, especially climbing stairs.  And so my fight goes on.  But I will overcome this, just as I have overcome death this time around.  And I will gain back as much of my former life as I can for those I love and for myself.

My Mom and Dad

Today, especially this afternoon, I've been thinking about my folks all day long.  I miss them so much!  I wish I had more pictures of them in my house to pop up on the wall, especially from when they were younger.

I have a sensitive nose, so smells are sometimes a powerful memory for me.  Mom wore Passion perfume. The stuff absolutely stinks on me, but it smelled wonderful on my mom.  I loved the smell of her skin and hair after she showered, too.  It was nothing special she used; it was just 'my mom'.  Mom and I had a rough time when I was a teen.  I have anxiety now that I take medication for and I very much believe it caused me undue stress and depression growing up, too.  But that was not at a time when mental health issues were talked about.

When I grew up, we became much closer.  I loved to go shopping with her and then out to lunch.  I loved being able to buy things for her and be the one who paid when we went out to eat.  But my favorite moments with her were when she started talking about her life - growing up in the '30s and early '40s, how she and my aunt and cousin Betty all hung out together, how she met my dad.

My grandfather owned a Ford dealership and my mother sat on the lap of Henry Ford when she was a little girl. She also worked for the father of writer Kurt Vonnegut and tells a funny story about when he returned from college.  He was known for pulling pranks in the office building.  In those days, they used a pulley system and Kurt put a mouse in it and sent it up to one of the secretaries.  When she screamed, his father hollered, "Kurt!"  because he knew his son was up to something.

I loved hearing about how she and Daddy moved all over while he was in the Army.  In fact, my oldest brother and I were both born in Germany and although we returned Stateside when I was only 6 months old, my three older siblings have lots of memories and stories from the stay in Europe.  I hope one day I can return to see the place I was born.

Dad wore Old Spice aftershave.  When my husband wears it once in a while, I think of my dad.  I loved to hold his hand.  They were big hands with thick fingers and my long, thin fingers would get a little squished, but I loved holding them because it made me feel safe.  I remember talking to him about books I'd read and listened to him discuss the ones he read, too.  He loved Louis L'Amour, Robert Parker, and Isaac Asimov.  Dad smiled a lot.  Usually, he was cracking some kind of joke.  He liked pun wars and most of us are pretty good at them, though I don't really do it much anymore.  Dad was a big man in my eyes, around six feet.  I grew to be just shy of 5'11" and he shrunk from chronic back degeneration, so in the end, I thought of him as a little gnome with his bald head.

Mom died on March 30, 2011.  Dad followed on March 22, 2012.  They'd been married for 65 years.

Today, I sit here wishing I had them around to talk to about my health issues.  I have to start using oxygen at night and I hate the idea that I cannot just be well.  I know they would reassure me in a way that no one else can, like no one but your parents can.  It doesn't matter that I'm over a half-century old, I still miss them.