Physical therapy

There wasn't any pain. Isn't that weird? I almost died, I was in a coma for 3 weeks, I had emergency c-section and ECMO, but I was never in any pain. Sure there was discomfort but nothing I can call painful at all. It wasn't until a couple of days after they woke me up that I figured out why, I had a fentanyl patch on my right arm. A patch that got progressively smaller in order to wean me off the pain killers.

I had just had a baby, after which you can have vaginal discharge (bleeding) for up to six weeks. I was still bleeding when I woke up. They had me in one of those net/mesh panties so I could wear sanitary napkins. Someone had to change those for me while I was in the coma. To lift me up and pull them down and change the pads. That is such a weird feeling, knowing someone had to take care of me like that. My pubic hair was clotted from all the blood and after I woke up it took a very kind nurse to help me work out the knots with a sponge. Gives the word sponge bath another meaning to me anyway. After I woke up I couldn't sit up, let alone lift up my hips so they could change the pads for me. So two nurses would come in to help me and even though they were so professional and I am just in awe of everything that they do, it still felt like a funny moment so I would usually try and say something funny like 'yeah, these mesh panties are super sexy!'. My husband, bless his heart, would usually leave the room when the nurses had to do stuff like that. I wouldn't have minded if he stayed, he's definitely seen all of me, but I also didn't mind that he wanted to retreat to the waiting area.

Because I had a c-section and hadn't moved for over three weeks, I couldn't just sit up. That requires using your abdominal muscles and mine were just too weak and sore for that. Everyday I had a physical therapist visit me in my room, also an occupational therapist and the speech therapist. There is something called 'the log roll', and that's where you roll from your back onto your side, and from there you sort of prop yourself up on your elbow and use your hands to sit up in a sideways fashion. I was so weak that when I tried that for the first time I rolled on my right side, and I had to have help to bring my legs to the side of the bed and then I could put my right elbow under me, and that was it. I couldn't bring the rest of my body up. The physical therapist put a sort of belt around me to hoist me up. I would sit for as long as I could tolerate and do exercises with my arms and legs. Putting my hands in the air, moving my legs from side to side. All this is very challenging when you're covered in wires and leads and if you accidentally move something you shouldn't have, a machine beeps and a nurse comes in to check on you.

I was so anxious to get out of the hospital as soon as I could that I did everything the therapists told me to do. I did exercises in bed. I was so tired and so exhausted, and everything was monitored, my oxygen saturation, my breathing, my heart rate. It usually took only a few minutes for me to get winded and would have to stop to catch my breath. All I wanted to do was just lay down, on the soft pillows, pull the blanket up and fall asleep. But I knew that I had to move my body, I needed to be well to take care of my babies. I wanted rest but needed work.

My speech therapist was a wonderful woman with a thick German accent, how wonderful is that, I loved her. She made me eat ice cream, and I hated it, food had lost all taste to me, I didn't want it. She would make me sip water, teeny tiny sips and she would hold her fingers against my throat and feel how I swallowed. She said she had x-ray fingers and could tell if I was doing it right or not. I actually didn't like doing the exercises she told me to do, saying AAAAA and EEEEE, and sucking air through a device to see how I was progressing. My husband would tell me to do the exercises and I didn't want to, and I'd sort of growl at him because my voice was just so raw still and he'd smile and say ''good job, doing your speech therapy, except that's not exactly the sounds you're supposed to make...'' and I'd laugh and be all resentful and then I'd do the stupid exercises.

I don't know why I was so reluctant to do the speech therapy, I was fine with putting in work for the physical therapy. Maybe because I felt my voice really wasn't improving at all, and it was so frustrating.

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...

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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...