This was the day five years ago I learned the cause of my time in ICU.
I learned why I went from about to be discharged to being rushed to a higher level of care.
It started after I took my shower in preparation for going home. Things didn’t go well when I got out of the shower and my still wet self was back in the bed, shivering wildly, with someone I vaguely recognized as the charge nurse was rushing to take my vital signs, including the device to take my blood oxygen levels.
I sort of recalled them not being able to be read because my temperature was fluctuating erratically, but nothing was really making sense at that point.
I remember the charge nurse kindly gave me a heated sheet and I heard her talking to the nurse about what had happened and then I felt myself being pushed underwater.
The memory of being pushed underwater wasn’t actually happening but from my perspective I was underwater. I was looking up at the surface of the water which was arching over me from both sides. It was reminding me of when I went on a strange water experience in the Atlantic Ocean at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
I was at the end of my first trimester of my pregnancy with Marlena, my daughter who was stillborn. I was doing things that seemed slightly strange and unlike me, especially things that made me scared, because I didn’t want fear to be a legacy I passed inadvertently to my daughter.
When I was flung off that strange ride, this is the same sight I saw.
Once again, I wasn’t scared, I was curious and fascinated.
In those early days I didn’t dare speak or write any of this because… the person who got the increased legacy of fear was myself.
This WAS the day 5 years ago when I requested to be off the far-too-sweet liquid diet I had been on. It was probably because I started refusing to consume anything that they finally agreed.
In my notes from that day here is some of what I was saying, which definitely showed by spunky, “everything will be ok and I will live to write about it” attitude.
I managed to get myself off a clear liquid diet (too darned sweet) to a regular liquid diet. I’ve learned my Dr doesn’t like to leap frog from clear to puréed… I mean that is too much. I suggested the BRAT diet but he just looked at me like I was the brat.
My big goal today is to sit for a few minutes in a chair.
My most exciting moment of all for today and entire month is seeing Emma perform at Kern Shakespeare Festival through the magic of live-streaming and the generosity of Arian And Brian – both have been such strong support for Emma and is so appreciated by this Mama.
And then these words:
So strange for a usually deep breathing person to not be able to breathe.
Many of my lab results numbers are better. Some are not.
My big goal today is to sit for a few minutes in a chair.
Little did I know that two years from that date I would be walking on the Appalachian Trail, something I did during childhood with my father and returned to when I moved back to New Jersey after decades away.
That is a long way from a goal of sitting for a few minutes in a chair in the intensive care unit in a hospital in Bakersfield, California.
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