My parents

When they extubated me, I saw my father sitting in a chair in the corner of my room. For the first couple of days after they brought me back from the drug-induced coma, I could hear my dad playing with my son out in the hallway. They were always just out of sight, but I heard them and I saw other people see them and smile at them. I didn't mind that I couldn't see them, I could hear that they were having much fun together and everyone was admiring my boy. It felt good to have them near and hear them laughing, I didn't want my son to see me like this though, so I was relieved that they stayed out of sight.

This didn't happen. My dad was back in Iceland and my son was back home with my mom. I was shocked when my husband told me that my dad wasn't here. I was so sure he was. There had been a commercial cycling through the TV channels about a monster truck rally in Indy and I had been wondering if my dad could take my son to see that, something fun for them to do together. My father was definitely with me, even though he was physically on another continent, and it brought me great comfort.

When my mom came to see me for the first time after I woke up, I was woefully unemotional. I don't think I had grasped yet the enormity of everything that had happened. I was still putting all the pieces together and still hadn't gained back the memory from about a week before my daughter was born. In the ICU, the wall with the door is just a big window, they need to be able to see you when you're in there, even before they get into the room. So I saw my mom coming down the hallway towards me, with her hands high up in the air, waving them around, smiling and crying at the same time. I was like ''really mom, control yourself'', I can only imagine how I would act if it had been my daughter caught between life and death for three weeks. I was still very clueless about the severity of everything that had gone on and so proceeded by calling my mother a big drama queen. Sorry mom. I then berated my nurse for not feeding me and asked if she couldn't just stick a hamburger in a blender for me. I was so hungry!

While I was in the hospital I missed my son so badly, it ached in the core of my being. It was a heartache. I knew he was being well taken care of but I missed him all the same. I wondered how this would affect him, affect our relationship, I had never been away from him for longer than 5 hours before this happened. I wanted to hug him and tell him that mommy would be home as soon as she could, that everything would be fine. My mom told me that he would take every single one of his books, out of the shelves and throw them on the floor, spreading them around him. I imagine it was sort of an outward display of inward emotions. Everything scattered and nothing like it was supposed to be. My poor little guy. I'm told that he would say that mommy was in the hospital, in the same tone of voice he said that daddy was at work. Like, that's just how things are now. I missed him desperately, but I didn't want him to come to the hospital. At least back home, he was familiar with his surroundings and the people around him.

I didn't miss my daughter. At all. This feels awful to write down, but it's true. I had never met her, I didn't know her, I didn't miss her. I had no memory of giving birth to her, so my hands would unconsciously seek my tummy, only to find that she wasn't there any more. She was only a two hour drive away, but really, it could have been a lifetime drive away. I wondered if/how/when we'd ever bond together. Then I just sort of pushed those thoughts away, I couldn't think about that then, I needed to get better and then I'd deal with it.

To be continued... 

Happy

Here is a picture of me and my husband, at the hospital after I woke up, and you'll notice the feeding tube in my nose.

Now I know it's not the most flattering picture of me ever taken, but give me a break, I just almost died. So considering, I think it's actually a very nice happy picture. Plus it was taken by a person I will always hold very dear to my heart. My perfusionist, a wonderful woman and we have kept in contact. She does amazing work and saves people. I am so thankful to her. Keep up the good work girl!

To be continued...

Feeding tube

After I woke up they had to put a feeding tube in me. My throat was not ready for food or liquids and I needed speech therapy. So a feeding tube needed to be threaded up my nose, down my esophagus, through my stomach and into my small intestines.

First they tried to thread it normally I guess. There's a sort of machine that spools it up into the nose and it's supposed to go its merry way all the way down to the small intestines. But that didn't work so much with me. We tried the right nostril, we tried the left one, we tried the left one again, and let me tell you, the numbing gel they use does very little. It is extremely uncomfortable having something rammed up your nose. I kept thinking about my baby girl who needed a feeding tube at the NICU before she got the hang of the bottle. If she could do it, so could I. But because this method didn't work with me, they needed to take me down to x-ray, and keep me continuously zapped while a technician threaded the tube up my nose, down my esophagus, into my stomach, and that's where she found out why the other method didn't work.

My stomach had partially collapsed. I guess not having any food in my belly for over 3 weeks just made my poor tummy collapse down on itself. The technician was very nice, she was wearing that big bulky x-ray vest and was sort of straddling me on top of the x-ray table, trying to feed this tube in, while watching it on the screen. It took a good 30 minutes but she finally got it and I got a good long view of my internal organs. She noticed my birth date on my hospital bracelet and told me her mother had the same birthday. I told her to wish her mom a happy belated birthday from me.

Because I was so weak when I woke up and was still connected to so much, lines and tubes and all sorts of machinery, they couldn't just plop me into a wheelchair to take me to where they threaded the tube. So they wheeled me down to x-ray in my hospital bed. A porter had to come because this was such a big hospital and my nurse would just have gotten us lost she said. So a very nice man came and sort of punched my husband in the shoulder all manly and said ''she's awake!'' and he kept complimenting my smile. Very nice guy.

This next part is very surreal but it did happen. I even asked my husband afterwards, to make sure it hadn't been one of my hallucinations. They started to wheel my bed out of my ICU room, and as we started down the ICU hallway, everyone, doctors, nurses, orderlies, technicians, hell, maybe even the patients, they all started applauding and whooping. I sort of looked around to see what they were clapping about and realized it was me. Little old me. I felt like I was in a parade, a one ICU bed parade, and all I could do was just smile and wave. It was the most amazing experience.

After they hooked up my feeding tube they hung up a sort of big bag filled with yellow stuff. The bag had the label ''protein''. It was the most unappetizing looking thing ever. This bag was then pumped through my feeding tube at a regular interval. But wait, because the feeding tube went straight to my small intestines, my stomach was still empty and I was therefore still hungry. So hungry.

To be continued...

A year ago today

A picture of my baby girl, taken exactly a year ago.

 Taken by the lovely nurses in the NICU. By that time I had been airlifted to another hospital. It feels weird to me to see pictures of her from when we hadn't met yet. She's just this cute little baby that I didn't have a connection to yet. I know she grew inside of me but I hadn't had physical contact with her. Physical contact, touch, skin touching skin, these are extremely important things, and you don't really realize it until you haven't got it, or you missed it.
I never saw the NICU she was in. I never met the nurses that took care of her. But I am forever grateful to them, they took care of my baby when I was not able to do so. I will carry them forever in my heart.


To be continued...

Smiling people

After I woke up there was a constant stream of people coming into my room. Smiling happy people. People that I had never seen before in my life. But with every person that came into the room, I could feel the love, the concern, the relief. Most of them told me ''You don't know me, but I know you''. These people cared about me, cared for me. Total strangers to me, but at the same time, so close to my heart. That was the greatest feeling, just all these wonderful people stopping by, giving me these big megawatt smiles.

People who know my husband know that he can be a bit of a chatterbox (you are honey), so I wasn't surprised that he had accumulated friends and acquaintances from our stay at the hospital. Not just doctors and nurses, but orderlies, technicians and other staff. Also there is a bond that happens between people who are stuck in the waiting rooms while their loved ones are in ICU. So I even had people come see me who had their loved ones in other ICU rooms.

Because my voice was still so raw, I couldn't really speak to anyone. I just nodded and smiled my biggest smile. I appreciated each and every visit. I was so happy to be back amongst the land of the living, and loving all the smiles they bestowed upon me. Those smiles were sweet balm for my bruised soul.

To be continued...

Do you know where you are?

The questions I got asked every day, many times a day.

Do you know where you are?
Yeah, at a hospital.
Do you know where the hospital is?
Indianapolis.
Do you know the name of the hospital?
No. (It was Methodist).
Do you know what day it is?
Nope.
Do you know what year it is?
2012? (It was 2011)

After a while I learned the name of the hospital and figured out that there was a calendar on the wall behind me to my right. So usually I could sneak a peek at that and answer ''Yes, it's Friday, March 11th''. There was only one nurse who caught on to me and would stand in front of the calendar so I couldn't see it. And then I had no idea what day it was.

One nurse asked me who the president was. I said Obama but was seriously contemplating telling the name of the Icelandic president, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson. I probably would have gotten a funny look with that answer ;)

People marvel at how I well I was able to communicate using English, but I didn't even think about it, if someone talks to me in English, I respond with English. I didn't find it uncomfortable at all. I guess I've been living here long enough to be able to speak English well enough to be understood.

To be continued...

Strength

I was so weak when I woke up. I had things, tubes and such, taped to my face. They itched and I would raise my right hand (my husband was holding my left) and the hand would make it maybe halfway towards my nose, and then I would scratch the air.

I was so thirsty, but I wasn't allowed to drink anything. Because I had been intubated for so long I would need to learn how to use the muscles in my neck properly, essentially learn how to swallow again. If some liquid went down the wrong pipe, I would aspirate and that would just not be good for my lungs at all. So all I was allowed were ice chips, teeny tiny ice chips. My husband had a glass full of them and a long plastic spoon. He made sure they were small enough and spoon fed me the ice.

I tried to talk, but all that came out were squeaks and rasps. My husband had to put his ear almost on top of my mouth in order to hear anything, and more often than not, he didn't hear what I was saying. That was so odd to me, because I sounded fine to myself, I could hear my own voice in my head. He was so extremely patient with me, I could see how angry he was with himself not to be able to understand me, but he tried his best and usually, if he couldn't understand me, he'd just feed me some more ice chips. Which was fine, even if I hadn't asked for it :) At one point I mimed for a piece of paper and a pen, thinking I'd just write down what I wanted to say. I grabbed the pen and started writing... except what came out were not words at all, there was just a funky line. I was too weak to write. At times this infuriated me, I was awake and I needed to talk, to converse with real people, to communicate, and I couldn't. Everyone was very nice and smiled and asked me if I needed anything or told me something and asked if I understood them, and all I could do was just nod, yes or no. At least I had that.

There was a big clock in my room, an analog clock, you know the one with the hands that show the time, not a digital one. And it took me many days to learn how to tell time again. I saw the clock and knew that it could tell me the time of day or night, but I couldn't piece together the numbers and the hands and what they meant. So I kept asking what time is it, to hear it said and connect it to where the hands were on the clock. I got it eventually and then it felt silly not having been able to do that before.

My body was fed intravenously, my stomach was empty and had been for over three weeks. And let me tell you something, even though your body is getting the nutrients it needs to function, if the stomach is empty, you are hungry. That's where the hunger comes from, an empty tummy. I was so hungry, ravenous even, and I wasn't even allowed to sip water. I begged for food, my nurses felt bad telling me no. It was awful, and of course the TV seemed to only be advertising food, food food, glorious food, and fizzy drinks.

I had to endure the hunger for almost a week I think. And you get used to the hunger pains fairly quickly. That was alarming to me, I wondered if anorexic people were that way. It becomes a sensation that is just a part of you, just a sort of background noise in your body. Much later when I was able to take small bites of pre approved foods and the hunger abated, I missed it. I actually missed feeling hungry. That was a scary feeling, I almost mourned the loss of the sensation of hunger.


I was so weak I couldn't sit up, but I could scootch down in my bed so my feet were on top of the end of the bed. The nurses had a technique where they would pull me up using sheets underneath me, but it seemed I was down again in no time. They had to do a lot of pulling. I also liked to hook my left leg out of the bed, letting it dangle in the air, moving it back and forth. A nurse would come in and tuck it under the blankets again, asking me where I thought I was going, with a smile on her face. As soon as she left, I'd let the leg dangle again, it felt good to be able to move something.


Suddenly I felt like peeing, and told my husband I needed to go to the bathroom. He got a funny look on his face and said ''Uh, sweetie, you have a catheter, so you just have to... you know, let it go...'' I was stunned, I had not noticed I had a catheter at all, but there it was, a tube, running from my urinary tract, taped to my right thigh, running down the side of the bed, where it ended in a little clear pouch. So I just let it go, weird feeling doing that while laying down in bed, and I could watch the trip it took, down the tube into the pouch. A pouch the nurses would examine each time they came in the room, for color and volume. It's funny how when you are so utterly helpless and need help with absolutely everything, how not embarrassed I was. I just counted myself lucky that there were people there, qualified people, caring people, helping me get through this, helping me to get better. I was never ashamed of my urine, as a matter of fact I was kind of proud anytime I got a comment on what a good color it was that morning or some such :)


To be continued...

 

Paranoia

I am not a naturally paranoid person. But after I woke up from the coma, there were a couple of days there where paranoia reigned supreme. And the thing is, it doesn't feel like paranoia at all, not when you're submersed in it. It isn't until afterwards that you're all, what the hell was I thinking!

In my mind, I believed that I was supposed to be discharged from the hospital, because, well, I was awake, so I must fine, so let me go home already! But it was taking forever, and I was sure that the nursing staff was somehow affecting the discharge process, that they weren't signing whatever needed signing, that they wouldn't move me to a different room. And then they wouldn't even answer me when I dinged the help button on the bed. I'm not even sure if I even had the strength then to push a button.

I was sure that one nurse was terrified of me, the one that had needed counseling because my husband had just gotten a helicopter to land next to my room. She wouldn't even get me a drink of water. And I was so thirsty, so very very thirsty.

I spied some ice lollies on a table next to my bed, but I couldn't reach them. Either I was too weak or I was still restrained, I'm not sure which. Then a nurse came and took them away, telling me that the ice delivery man had brought the wrong ones. I asked her when he would be coming back, and she replied ''he's been terminated''.

In my room there was a TV, up in the right corner, and if you didn't have a particular channel on, it would just show a loop of fish swimming around, and algae gently breezing in some underwater currents. I don't know why but the scene was entirely Asian to me, maybe it was the little seahorses, but I don't know why my mind would make an Asian connection to that. Anyway, it was just stuck on this aquatic scene and I couldn't change the channel, I was probably restrained so I wouldn't pull out my leads again.

I was convinced that in the room next to mine, there were twin girls, six or seven years old, Korean, and they were dying from cancer, along with their grandparents, who were with them in the room. A Korean family dying of cancer. There was a window from my room to theirs, but there were drapes so I couldn't see them.

These twin girls could communicate with each other telepathically and they did so frequently, only I managed to pick up on their chatter. When they realized this they started messing with me, controlling what fish and what music was playing on my television. I pleaded with them to make the nurses who were always coming into their room, come into my room as well, because I needed help, I wasn't supposed to be here, I needed water, I needed my husband.

This was a day I think my husband drove his mom to our house and did some errands while he was gone. That was a day I needed him with me. That feels awful to say because he was with me so much. But I really needed him during my paranoia day, because my mind would suddenly start weaving him into the paranoia. Why wasn't he here, was he really picking up his mom from the hotel, did he really have to take a shower, was he really spending time with his son... Gah, the paranoia was awful and I felt so alone and no one would help me and I was just fighting telepathically with some mischievous little girls.

I eventually befriended them and played some games with them. They told me they were dying but they were at peace with it, their grandparents would go first.

Can you hear how loony this all sounds? But to me, all this happened.

When the grandfather died, the drapes were open just a little bit, so I could see the nurse sitting on his bed, holding his hands. I couldn't see him because his bed was next to the wall under the window. The nurse had this sort of wistful smile on her face while she was feeling his pulse, feeling him slip away, telling his wife that he was gone. I then saw him, standing behind the nurse, looking down on himself. He was magnificent, tall but bent with age, he had big smooth cheekbones, he looked so wise, he was totally at peace. I would recognize this man if I ever saw him, that's how clear this memory is to me.

None of this happened. Not in this reality anyway.

I've been writing a lot about what was going on in my head, next I need to tackle what my body was going through.

To be continued...

A year

Today is my daughter's first birthday. A year since I lapsed into unconsciousness, a drug-induced coma. The memories I have of her birth are non-existent. I was unconscious when they cut her from me. There were no contractions, there was no pain. Only darkness.

She arrived into this world into a sterile room full of strangers. Medical professionals and wonderful people, but strangers nonetheless. I did not hear her first cry. Or her second, or third, etc.

It is absolutely heart-breaking to me that I could not breastfeed my daughter. Apparently my breast-milk did soak through a couple of hospital gowns before my body stopped producing it altogether. I was still breastfeeding my son (3 years and 2 months) when all this happened. So this is how he was weened. Not only did his mommy disappear, but the comfort of his mother's breast stopped as well. How hard it must have been on my little boy. People can call me a tree hugging hippie if they want to, but I fully intended on breastfeeding them both after the second one was born. What a wonderful bonding experience that would have been. I'm sure some people are icked by that. I also don't find it weird at all if a woman breastfeeds a baby that isn't her own. We're just mammals and this is just milk. No reason to get all weirded out by it. I am bummed that I missed doing this for my baby girl.

She saw so many people before she saw me, her mommy. My mom became her mom, and she took such good care of her, and my son. I do not know how my mom functioned at all, knowing her daughter was fighting for her life. But she did exactly what I would have wanted her to do, took care of my babies, kept them fed and warm and safe, and as happy as they could be under the circumstances.

I missed my daughter's first month of life. While I should have been breastfeeding her, changing her diapers, soothing her, studying her and learning her quirks, being frustrated from the lack of sleep, being blissfully happy with my family, crying at the drop of the hat because of all the hormones, kissing her little peachy fuzz hair, tickling her little baby toes, hugging my babies...

instead of all that, this is what I was doing

 and it was hard, and it took a big toll on my body and my mind.

  I am so sad that this is my daughter's birth story, and that I will be reminded of it every year on her birthday. But I am so happy that I'm alive and that she's alive and that we are both healthy, and that is what truly matters. Everything else is just secondary, but it doesn't stop me from having feelings about it.

To be continued...

Picture

India

So, I totally thought I was in India. And I remember watching the television, and seeing all the commercials for hamburgers from various joints, like MacDonalds, Wendy's, Arby's and stuff like that. And this was so strange to me because I thought, why are they advertising cow meat in a country like India where they don't eat beef? Yeah, I know, funny stuff.

I thought I was in a children's hospital, because the only equipment that could save me was in a children's hospital. I thought that I had gotten sick on my birthday and just fainted somewhere and no one knew what happened. I thought a blue folder I could see out on a shelf outside of my ICU room was filled with medical information about me, information compiled by my husband. I thought that when I came into the hospital that so many medical professionals were out sick that they were down to 33% capacity.

I kept watching the TV because I thought my infant son (I fluctuated from thinking I had a boy or a girl), had been kidnapped from my dad when he was bringing my son home from the hospital. Someone had snatched him from his arms before he could put him in the car outside the hospital. And I was waiting for news on the TV. But my husband kept telling me that our baby was fine, it was at our home with its grandmother and big brother.

I thought I'd had a son and that his name was Paul and that he had died. I thought the pictures on the wall were of my newborn daughter and son, that I'd somehow had twins.

I thought that my husband was battling the doctors to have me transferred back to the hospital in Iceland. I thought that he'd contacted a helicopter to take me back, and that he was having it land right next to my room. The noise was deafening and everything shook. Nurses and doctors were running scared. There was so much rain just hammering the window behind me. I saw men with guns running outside my room. I didn't get transferred and my husband signed some sort of paperwork saying that this was all just a misunderstanding due to language barriers and miscommunication. A nurse had to get help for the trauma she suffered, I didn't like her, she told me that it wasn't fair that I was getting special treatment when there were children suffering that needed the help more than I did.

None of this actually happened, but to me it feels like a real memory. As real as me sitting right here, right now, typing this on the computer. And that is such a weird feeling, because there isn't really a compartment in my brain to put that in. It wasn't a dream but it didn't happen.

Next came the paranoia.

To be continued...

Awake

Things are kind of a blur for the first couple of days after they woke me up from the coma. I didn't know how many kids I had, I didn't know what year it was, I didn't know where I was.

I'm sure there were doctors and nurses around when they woke me up, but I only remember my husband. And him telling me that I had been asleep for a while. They woke me up on March 7th 2011 and I thought it was the year 2012. But I also thought that it wasn't Christmas yet and I thought that I'd missed our son's 3 year old birthday, both things that had already happened a couple of months before.

In my mind I was talking a mile a minute, asking questions, and more disturbingly, getting answers. I heard my own voice when I was talking. No one else heard this, because at first I was still intubated.

I don't know how long after I woke up they extubated me. But this is how I remember that procedure. There was a doctor there telling my husband to remember what he told him before about what he could expect would happen with me. Enigmatic yes. Somehow in my mind I had decided that this doctor was sort of a cocky know-it-all, but good at his job. There was also a nurse there who I in my mind had also decided that she didn't like this doctor at all.

They told me to cough while the pulled out this really long tube from my throat. And in my mind there was like a projectile of mucus that came out with the tube, shooting towards the door, narrowly missing the doctor, much to the nurse's amusement. In reality, they just pulled the tube out and I coughed for a long time getting all the mucus and spit out, which they suctioned away.

I was so weak I could barely move my head or my arms. Muscles actually start to deteriorate after only 8 hours of inactivity, and I hadn't moved for 21 days. My body was mush. It was shocking not to have a pregnancy belly anymore, I was 30 lbs lighter, my nails were long, I had hairy armpits, but I think some nice nurse may have shaved my legs below the knees. My hair was a mess. A nurse told me they had fun playing with it, braiding it so it wouldn't get in the way of the machines. In my mind I thought they had had to shave some part of it off and was wondering what kind of haircut I would have to get after this.

My vocal chords were raw from having a tube rammed in between them for 3 weeks. I talked and talked but my voice was barely a raspy whisper.

What was happening in actuality and what was happening in my head were two very different things. First I thought I was at a hospital in Iceland and that there had been complications with the birth so they had to fly me to another hospital, the one I was at now. Which in my mind was in India, in Bhutan even.

To be continued...

ARDS

My pneumonia was what led me to have ARDS. Which stands for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. It is described as a life threatening lung condition that prevents enough oxygen from getting into the blood.


The air sacs in the lungs become full of fluid. They took x-rays every single day of my lungs while I was in the coma. I've seen the first picture and the lungs were completely white, except for a little part on the bottom right. White is fluid. My lungs were shutting down.


About a third of people with ARDS die from the disease. The lucky survivors regain normal lung function, other may have some lung damage. In my last x-ray, taken a month after I was released from the hospital, my lungs were black (healthy), and only a little part on the bottom left, was white. That may be healed now, I do not know.


People who survive ARDS may have memory problems and problems with thinking after the ordeal. This is due to brain damage that may have happened when the lungs weren't working properly and the brain wasn't getting enough oxygen.


I was extremely groggy with all these drugs in my system when they woke me up. This is what I saw on my wall to my left and I was so confused, so very very confused, and it took me many days to crawl out of that confusion.

 To be continued...

Coma

I suffered from an identity crisis when I was in my drug-induced coma.

I was a Japanese woman, in my twenties. Living in Canada shortly after WWII. The daughter of Japanese immigrants. I lived in a small apartment, two floors up with a little balcony.

Weird, huh...

I did not have a husband, I did not have children. My life felt extremely empty and I felt very alone.

You know how when you're watching a movie and everything is just sort of going along and everything seems fine but then there's this undercurrent of something, like you just know that there's something sinister going on but you can't quite put your finger on it.

That's how I felt. I knew something was wrong but I didn't know what. I didn't know who I was and I couldn't grasp what it was that felt off for me.

In my coma dream I ended up at a hospital. I did not know why, but I knew I was in a hospital. The decor at the hospital was all white and glossy and minty green. The nurses wore hats and all the uniforms were very crisp and white. Everyone seemed to have a cup of coffee, all the time, I could smell coffee, always.

I thought that maybe I was in this hospital because I just had a baby? But I didn't remember being pregnant, so why would I have a baby?

I felt like I was in a fog, but not in a regular fog, where you don't know where you are or where you're going, but in an identity fog, I couldn't find me! It's like when you're trying to remember the name of a movie or an actor and it's right there, on the tip of your tongue but you just can't remember it. That's how I felt, all the time. Super frustrating and very scary.

In my coma dream I would sort of swoosh from being at my apartment and to being at the hospital. When I was at the hospital I could not move. I could see a corner of the ceiling and some monitors, just because that was how my head was positioned. And every time I would see that stupid corner ceiling, I was actually waking up from the drug-induced coma. And I would panic because I couldn't move, and I couldn't speak. And every time I managed to open my eyes, some very nice person, smiling at me, would come and administer more drugs and I would go under again.

I remember each and every time waking up, trying to scream to get attention, trying to scream that something wasn't right, I didn't know what was happening and it scared the bejeesus out of me. I thought if I could just talk to this person, explain that they were in control of my life and I didn't even know what my life was, if I could just talk to them, they'd let me wake up and figure things out.

It was a long three weeks in a coma. You know when you're dreaming and you know that it's a dream and you're just waiting to wake up. I had that feeling of waiting, but the waking part would never come. So I was just floating, trying to remember so hard who I was and what I was supposed to be doing, because this sure as hell wasn't it.

When they did finally bring me out of the coma I was smiling because I saw my husband, and I remembered him, and I was so happy to remember. But I was crying because in my coma dream someone told me that they had just offered my husband the choice of being spared all this fear and uncertainty, but instead he would not know me and we wouldn't have our children. How scary is that!

When I awoke, my husband held my hand and told me that I had been asleep for a little while but that everything was going to be fine. Just seeing him and hearing him and feeling him, I knew that he loved me and he would always be with me.

They woke me up the day after my 31st birthday. Does that mean I'm still 30 ;) Anyway, I think we'll have a big celebration on my next birthday, I should get two cakes, yes?

After I woke up, I experienced some hallucinations, some delirium, some things that I still feel like happened, but now know that didn't. I'll get into that next.

The worst part of waking up is not knowing whether or not you're still in the coma, and just dreaming something new.

To be continued...

ECMO

I had been airlifted to another hospital. A skilled team of critical care doctors took great care of me when I arrived. A special medical team of pulminologists, perfusionists, and all sorts of other extremely medically sounding professionals, did a procedure on me.

I was put on the ECMO machine. ECMO stands for extra corporeal membrane oxygenation.

When I woke up I knew what the letters in ECMO stood for, but I know I have never heard this term before in my life. Which means that my brain was clearly processing information even though I was in a coma. You don't lose your ability to hear when you are unconscious, it just gets processed in a different way.

My medical team was amazing. They had just had an extremely busy day behind them, including three lung transplants. A surgeon cut two holes in the right side of my neck. Then they placed two tubes in them (think garden hose for size). One tube pumped blood out of my body, the ECMO machine took the carbon dioxide out of my blood and put oxygen into it again, then the other tube put the blood back into my body.

This gave my lungs time to heal because they didn't have to do the breathing for my body. A breathing machine was still pumping air in my lungs, but that was just kept at minimum, I don't know the exact numbers, maybe 6 or 8 breaths per minute, something like that.

Someone had to monitor the ECMO machine 24/7. I was on ECMO for 12 days I think.

At one point I was not doing well at all. They have to have you on blood thinners when you're on this machine and I had just had major abdominal surgery, the emergency c-section. They did an ultrasound and found that I was bleeding internally. I was also bleeding along all my leads, the IVs and everything. Blood just pooling on the floor under my bed. A doctor came and inserted a really big needle into my abdomen, draining off over 4 liters of blood which were keeping me from breathing. I had a lot of blood transfusions. I am grateful for everyone who gives their blood, they truly save lives, they saved mine.


I got a urinary tract infection from the catheter so they put me on antibiotics. I got an allergic reaction. They put me on something else, but couldn't really figure out what exactly I was allergic to.


I was in a lot of discomfort apparently, I would sort of grimace and scrunch up my face, they upped my pain medication and that helped. They needed me to cough, so I would cough up the fluid in my lungs. I was on medication that paralyzed me so I couldn't move, so the coughing was bad to witness I believe. It would just sort of take over my body and I would cough and cough and cough.


I was in restraints because the medicine that induces a coma would wear off very quickly for me. If a nurse didn't administer a new dose every hour on the hour, I would start to wake up...


...and that made for some confusing moments during my coma, for sure, but I'll leave that for the next post.


To be continued...

Hero

People are calling me a hero for having gone through this. I do not feel like a hero. A hero to me is someone that has control over their own actions.

Something happens (shit hits the fan), they assess the situation, decide on a course of action, and then execute accordingly. They may be scared but they do what they have to do anyway. Then it's crossed fingers and prayers that everything will turn out all right.

I just wasn't conscious for any of this. I didn't consciously know that I was on the verge of dying. I wasn't consciously afraid of death, of being ripped away from my husband and our children, and our families. I didn't experience the fear.

My loved ones on the other hand did very much experience this fear. My husband is absolutely my hero. He did what he needed to do. I believe in my heart and soul that he saved me. He did not give up. I don't know how he did it and I cannot even put myself in his shoes. He is my rock, he is my heart, he is the love of my life and I truly believe I would not be here if it weren't for him. Staying by my side. Taking care of everything that needed to be taken care of. My mom came to take care of our children, so he could focus on me, he did not leave my side. I may have been unconscious and out of it but that means the world to me. He stayed with me.

The next couple of posts will be about what I experienced while I was in the drug-induced coma. It will probably be about as exciting as listening to someone describe what they dreamed last night. So bear with me, but I have to write it down anyway.

To be continued...

Premature baby

She was born 5 weeks prematurely.
She was 5 lbs 15 oz (2693 gr).
She was 19,5 in (49,5 cm).

She had trouble breathing when she first entered this world.
She stayed in the NICU for eight or nine days.
She had a feeding tube up her nose while she was learning how to drink from a bottle.

She was taken care of by people I have never met.
So many strange hands held her before her own family held her.
So many strange hands and family and friends held her before her own mother got to hold her.

She was released from the hospital when she was able to hold her own temperature steady.
She came home to her distraught grandmother and her confused big brother.
Her parents were at another hospital, the mother fighting for her life and her father fighting along with her.

She was well cared for and loved and wanted for nothing.
Her grandmother became her mother.
Her other grandmother came as well.
Even her aunt flew out to help.
She is a lucky little girl.
But she was still a little girl who needed her mommy and daddy, and her big brother also needed his mommy and daddy.

Her first month of life was robbed from me, her birth was robbed from me, I was robbed from my son.

My husband had to decide her name all on his own. We had not firmly talked about names, we didn't even know the gender. I know he didn't want to name her after me because that would mean that I wouldn't make it. And I needed to make it.

All this happened, and I had no idea. I was in another world fighting for my life. I didn't consciously know it, but every single cell in my body was screaming and fighting and clawing its way towards life and health and my family.

I was put on full life support. Machines were keeping me alive. My vital signs were not stable enough to move me to another hospital. A hospital that had a machine that just might be able to save me. They wanted to airlift me to that hospital but the crew on the chopper would not accept me with those unstable vital signs, said that I would perish on the way.

Miraculously on Saturday (I was admitted on Monday) I was stable and they whisked me into the chopper and flew me to the hospital. I do not remember the flight. My husband had to drive to the hospital and when he arrived there was a team of medical experts ready to explain to him what they needed to do and what he needed to sign in order for them to do it.

To be continued...

Contagious

They didn't know if I had H1N1 (swine flu), their samples were somehow compromised. My husband and son also had samples taken, they both had the flu but not the same type as me.

At one point they even suspected I had H5N1 (avian flu). I was put in complete isolation after they stitched me up. I have no memory of this.

My husband got a friend of his to stay at the house with our son (asleep for the night), so he could come to the hospital to see me and our new baby.

Honestly I think people were brave to babysit for us, because the doctors at that point didn't know what I had or how contagious it was. I am so grateful to our friends who watched our son so my husband could come to the hospital. I think my husband did try and ask this favor of our friends who don't have children yet. I understand it must have been really scary, because you don't want to get sick yourself and you absolutely don't want children catching anything potentially dangerous.

The night our baby was born, I was apparently conscious after the surgery. Because I was in isolation they brought me a computer and showed me my baby via web cam. I have no memory of this. When my husband arrived at the hospital I was unconscious. He did not get to see me awake but he went to the NICU to see our baby for the first time, and hold her for the first time.

 I don't know when this next bit happened because I do not remember it, but apparently I woke up at one point, ripped out my tubes and IVs, stood up and started walking out of the isolation chamber. I was going to get my baby, my baby needed me, I needed my baby, some base nature as a mother made me do that. It took a couple of nurses to hold me back and I wouldn't budge until one of them said to me that I had to get better for the sake of my children. I had to take care of me first before I could take care of my children. They were in good hands until then. This calmed me down and they re-intubated me and this time restrained me to the bed so I could not rip out all my leads again.


It is extremely weird to me that this happened and I do not remember it, at all.


This was a Tuesday. I got progressively worse as the week wore on. They put me in a prone positioning bed, it takes pressure of the lungs to try and give them the room to heal. My body was so full of fluid I was unrecognizable, all puffy and eyes sunken in. When my mother arrived she said she was afraid to touch me for fear of my skin just bursting underneath her fingers.


To be continued...

Emergency C-section

I was laying in the pre-op room in the hospital bed. There was a flurry of activity around me. Lots of people coming in and out of the room. Everyone talking over me, very few actually talking to me. A nurse asked me for my husband's phone number. I gave it to her but thought it was strange that they didn't already have it, I mean what if I were unconscious? They called to tell him that I was having an emergency c-section. He told them that he couldn't come until he had found a sitter for our son. I wondered if I should ask to speak with him but then I thought ''He knows I love him and I know he loves me'' so we don't really have to talk, I'd just get emotional or something.

I wasn't sure if I needed to pee or not and was almost going to ask the nurses if they needed me to go before the surgery but everyone seemed so busy that I didn't want to interrupt them.

Someone came and took my wedding ring, that upset me a bit, but it came off quite easily. I told her not to lose it.

There was a big clock on the wall, it seemed like it was just staring me in the face. All huge and obnoxious, ticking the minutes away. Everything was on hold because we were waiting for the anesthesiologist. I overheard two people talking, one said that sure this guy was on call but he probably wouldn't get here until 8:30pm, and someone answered ''this lady doesn't have until 8:30!''

This startled me because the huge clock was just 7:10pm or something like that. And I thought to myself, why don't I have until 8:30, what is happening?

I was asked some questions I think, I probably answered them though I don't really remember. I do remember nurses talking about who could go off and have dinner first and someone laughing, it was nice to hear laughter. Someone else said there was a chopper coming in with a senile guy with a broken leg, and they were discussing who would go deal with that.

Finally the anesthesiologist came and asked me a whole bunch of questions that I thought he should have known beforehand. He was on my left, holding my hand, and someone on my right was clearly pissed off at this guy and was snapping at him to get a move on already.

I was relatively calm through all this, I knew with an emergency c-section I would be unconscious for the delivery. I wondered how they would put me to sleep, if it was with a mask or with an IV.

They wheeled my bed into the operating room next to the operation table. They then did the whole sliding the sheets maneuver, it was very smooth.

Someone put a mask over my mouth and nose and that's when I really had difficulty breathing. I yanked the mask away and said ''I can't breathe''. This person put the mask back on me. I yanked it away again, struggling and saying ''I can't breathe''. He/she loosened the hold of the mask against my face, I was grateful for that. I wondered if this was just a feeling people got before they had surgery with general anesthesia, this feeling of not being able to breathe.

When I woke up I had tears in my eyes and a big lump in my throat. My husband was on my left, telling me that I had been asleep for a while. I saw the wall behind him, covered with pictures of our son and a little baby I didn't know was a boy or a girl.

I had been in a coma for 3 weeks.

To be continued...

All is well

On Valentine's Day 2011, my husband took me to see my OB/GYN. This was a Monday and I had been really sick during the weekend. Fever, coughing, throwing up and generally feeling like shit. My husband was also sick and our 3 year old son as well. I figured we just all had the flu, but my doctor wanted me to come in to check if I had strep throat. I was almost 35 weeks pregnant with my daughter at that point in time.

I sat on the examination table while my doctor examined me. My husband and son were in the room with us. My doctor told me that I had pneumonia and that I was dehydrated and that he would have to admit me into the hospital. This stunned me, I knew I was sick but I didn't think I was ''hospital'' sick. So I asked the doctor how long he thought I would have to stay in the hospital. He told me two days.

I had been so worried about how my son was going to deal with me being gone for 48 hours when the baby came and now I worried even more about him seeing me in a hospital bed, I didn't like it, but I couldn't do anything about it.

We went through to admissions and they sat me in a wheel chair, the admission process took a long time. I got a room and had to put on a hospital gown. My son did not like seeing me like that, neither did I. I was then wheeled to get an x-ray of my lungs.

This was a new hospital and we were supposed to go on a tour that preceding Saturday, but had to cancel because we were all sick. Being wheeled in a wheel chair through countless hallways was not how I pictured touring the new hospital where I would deliver my baby.

The x-ray technician covered my belly so the baby wouldn't get zapped with too many rays, and took an x-ray of my lungs. My husband and son waited outside. I was then wheeled back into my room.

My son had an appointment with his pediatrician so my husband had to leave to take him there. I asked him to get me some things from home, a book to read and some underwear. I think I watched TV while I waited for them to come back.  When they came back, my son did not want to be there, he kept saying ''drive home''. So I asked my husband to take him home, I didn't want to make him stay with me in the hospital.

The next thing I remember is that it's the following day, Tuesday February the 15th, it's evening, and I'm being rolled along the hallways again, but this time I'm in the hospital bed. I see the lights whooshing by me in the ceiling. I don't remember having talked with any doctors but I know that I'm being taken into surgery and that I'm going to be having an emergency c-section. I am all right in this knowledge and am surprised how calm I am and wonder if they have given me that medication that makes you kind of not care about what's happening or not.

To be continued...