Sepsis – Creative Life Midwife

Giddy & Grateful to Move On Down to the Step Down Unit

October 15, 2024 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Here is what I shared on this day in 2019, five years ago:

Big news! I’ve moved from ICU to the Step Down unit! (Don’t ask what time I was woken up to be moved.)

This means I’m one step closer to leaving the hospital.

I even actually have a morning view that is more stereotypical!

I was over the top giddy about being able to be out of the ICU. I thought I would be able to get up and use the restroom alone without alarms sounding but that wasn’t true. I didn’t mention how when I was rolled out of the intensive care unit, I saw a nurse I am in a book club with who greeted me like it was an everyday occurrence to be wheeled onto her floor.

After that, I was afraid to see her again. I don’t even remember if I did see her again. This is a sure indicator of trauma – though now I remember I did see her again because we talked about sepsis and how my disorientation is normal, even expected, with sepsis.

I went on to cheerfully share my daily gratitude experience while in the hospital:

Today, I am so grateful for:

Arian Garcia for patiently live-streaming KSFs Henry V! So wonderful to sit in my room and watch. It was the best…. and my child, Emma, truly brought it. The theatre-Mom in me was impressed AND so was the director-me who often watches plays taking notes in my head. (Trying to get over that!)

The gift of tenacity at this very vulnerable, frightening and life shifting time.

People who are talented comforters (and might not even know it).

The powerful medicines of story listening AND story questioning and storytelling.

YouTube meditation videos and music.

Water

And I’m grateful for each person reading here!

by the way: this room has TWO CHAIRS!

I feel like a queen.

How do you feel today?

Revisiting this post reminds me how significant it is to honor the rocking, rolling nature of emotions during times of crisis and upset. I am so grateful for the me who I was and the me who I am and the me I am becoming. Since I started writing this blog post the sun has come out – and I may get my walk done after all.

🎨 | Award-Winning Writer/Actor/Storyteller

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🎁 Your presence here makes me feel grateful.

✍🏻I am a writer first, writing & creativity coach, multi passionate creative next. Writing has always been my anchor art and to her I always return. Thankfully, with great love.

🎯 My aim is to create content here that inspires and instructs – if there is ever a topic you would like for me to explore, please reach out and tell me. My ultimate goal is to create posts, videos and more that speak to your desires as well as mine because where these two intersect, our collaborative, joyful energy ignites into a fire of love, light and passionate creativity.

Goals Then & Surpassing in Surprising Ways

October 14, 2024 by jjscreativelifemidwife

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.

🌟 Creative Life Coach & Muse Cultivator

🎨 | Award-Winning Writer/Actor/Storyteller

🌱 | Empowering Your Second Act

🎉| New Courses/Programs Coming soon!

🎁 Your presence here makes me feel grateful.

✍🏻I am a writer first, writing & creativity coach, multi passionate creative next. Writing has always been my anchor art and to her I always return. Thankfully, with great love.

Staying Positively Numb in the Intensive Care Unit

October 12, 2024 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I found my documentation of my first full day in the intensive care unit to be fascinating.

I believe – in writing and noticing from a distance – how numb I was and while grateful to share my experience, I was only comfortable at this point in the most surface share as possible.

I wrote:

“These are the curtains for my current… zone of experience.” I was unwilling to say I was in the Intensive Care Unit. I remember in the past when well meaning positive thinking people encouraged one another not to speak about reality if it wasn’t good.

I went on to discuss photo taking without saying I was referring to photo taking: “It was intriguing me to see what happens when you turn the light on and turn the light off.”

I refer back to my history and relate to my parents, who I hadn’t even told I was sick with pneumonia and didn’t tell them I was admitted to the hospital nor that I was admitted to the ICU. I wrote further “I’ve also found sometimes the lens clarifies things such as old grave markers your eyes can’t see details the lenses had. (Thanks, parents, for taking us on countless adventures in Northern Arizona cemeteries with nearly invisible headstones that we could magically see when we looked through our camera lens.)

I also loved sneaking some art appreciation into this experience.

After the introduction, I lean closer into reality:

Last night was rough. Very little sleep and then sleep interrupted. Really, a chest X-ray at 2 AM after my first 45 minutes of good sleep?

I won’t complain about all the horrid things that happened, because eventually I moved from jotting notes in a tiny notebook to jotting notes on my phone. Which leads to Gratitude #1

1. I have always excelled at advocacy for others and put myself into the “when there is enough time and resources” pile. My documentation – some bleary and messy – was so on purpose and so (in a weird way fun) and it subtracted the painful emotions I was feeling.

2. I am starting to feel like writing again, something that hasn’t happened since October 2 or so. I am wanting to create again – I even won a giveaway of Gelli plates from Gelli Arts – Gel Printing Plate and have yet to open or use because I was getting sick when I received them! So excited to create with them!

3. I also created a positive, collaborative partnership with my nurse last night. By this morning it felt like we were caring friends.

4. To the friends who managed to visit yesterday, thank you! To those who send love and follow along! Thank you! I’ll be more effusive in the future!

5. Bonus: the list making in #1 is what leads to suggestions for change which usually leads to research. I think I have discovered (and was confirmed during shift change) what actually happened medically on Thursday though no one specifically said the words to me. Will continue with deep thought-see diving which is something I love!

The bonus note sounds like the usual me. I was still there, underneath the fear, the struggle, the wishing I was anywhere except the hospital bed I was connected to by wires and cords and alarms.

Interesting also to note: we are on Day 12 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge and I have posted every. Single. Day.

This level of consistency on my blog is unusual for my recent history.

I am grateful to be writing and I am grateful for those of you reading and commenting.

Please tell me how your blogging (and life) is going in the comments.

🌟 Creative Life Coach & Muse Cultivator

🎨 | Award-Winning Writer/Actor/Storyteller

🌱 | Empowering Your Second Act

🎉| New Courses/Programs Coming soon!

🎁 Your presence here makes me feel grateful.

✍🏻I am a writer first, writing & creativity coach, multi passionate creative next. Writing has always been my anchor art and to her I always return. Thankfully, with great love.

I Knew It Was Arriving Soon: Now, the Day is Here… and we start and continue beginning

October 9, 2024 by jjscreativelifemidwife

I have been waiting for my facebook memories to cue me, to invite me into the memory – to recognize – to be alert that five years ago my hospital stay began.

It was the day of my first gratitude list from the hospital where I filled people in on what was going on with me:

The pneumonia wasn’t getting better, so I’m now tucked away in a downtown Bakersfield hospital. I’ve slept for 12 of the last 15 hours after an 18 hour wait on a gurney in the hallway of the ER.

I’m grateful:

1. For patient phlebotomists who are willing to take their time chasing down my shy veins.

2. For Michelle and Julia who have visited and brought Emma with them. This is stressful for her, too. Last night she was very helpful.

3. For technology that brings my favorite relaxation music into the hospital with me.

4. For Miracle Mark Tarango who lit up the ER with his presence yesterday.

If you are in Bakersfield and would like to visit, please text or pm me to find out where I am. I may not be super interactive, and it would be great to see you. Prayers from everywhere are welcome.

The 2024 me is finding the conscious collection and curation of these memories to be fascinating. The self-compassion is infinite now, the me-who-was-in-the-experience was trying hard… and was more than slightly miserable.. was definitely doing her best and taking things one moment at a time.

Today I am going to be putting finishing touches on The Muse Method Project and in my breaks from that, I am going to do some meditative time travel back into my 2019 self in this experience.

I am brave enough. I am ready to step into the full depths of this healing, just as I am ready to complete The Muse Method.

Thank you so much for reading. Your presence means a lot to me.

Julie Jordan Scott hugs an unusual tree — Julie Jordan Scott hugs all kinds of trees

🌟 Creative Life Coach & Muse Cultivator

🎨 | Award-Winning Writer/Actor/Storyteller

🌱 | Empowering Your Second Act

🎉| New Courses/Programs Coming soon!

🎁 Your presence here makes me feel grateful.

✍🏻I am a writer first, writing & creativity coach, multi passionate creative next. Writing has always been my anchor art and to her I always return. Thankfully, with great love.