Alive

It was my birthday on Sunday and all I could think was "I'm still alive."

(Oooh! Dramatic paragraph spacing!)

On my birthday last year I was so sick I couldn't move from the couch. I didn't know why I was so sick yet; all I knew was that it was getting worse and that it was the worst flu and set of mouth sores I'd ever had. I was confused that it wasn't going away and my mouth felt like it had a migraine breeding millions of baby migraines within it, and I couldn't understand why nothing I did would help.

That was the 23rd. Today is the 25th. On this very day exactly one year ago, I couldn't take the pain anymore and no longer had any energy to sit up and finally went to bed. For 24 hours. I remember every little detail so clearly; feeling sicker than I ever felt before:

Why won't this pain go away?

Fever dreams. I remember them in such detail it's like I dreamt them last night.

The TV on in my room showing a reality show given the awful title Road Side Warriors. Hyperbole, hyperbole! I can't stop thinking of that word, and that stupid title.

The snow plow going back & forth on my street, not just ringing its alarm non-stop but smashing something into the ground repeatedly, why can't you get into an accident and shut up for good?!

The sweat. SO MUCH SWEAT. Drowning in sweat. How is it possible for this fever NOT to have been sweat out yet?!

Getting up and licking my lips only to find a film has formed inside my mouth and is falling out in pieces.

Ads on TV that show an old man in a hospital, wondering if I should go to a hospital.

Lying on one side of my face helps numb the awful awful awful awful awful mouthsore/gum/tooth pain, along with a heating pad which I put in the freezer. But the freezer smells, the fridge smells. EVERYTHING SMELLS. All the food smells SO STRONGLY. Mike had made maple syrup sweet potatoes and quiche, trying to give me soft foods. But I smell every little ingredient. None of it makes sense. 

Walking is too difficult. I don't have the energy. I feel like I can't even sit up. No energy at all.

Vivid, story-heavy dreams where almost everything was wrong, very wrong.

Ah, I remember it all so clearly!

The next morning, I was horrified to find out, upon wakening, that I didn't feel any better still. I managed to pull myself out of bed and forced myself to shower, and that's when I had trouble breathing. Again. I had had a few bouts of breathing problems over the past while and they were getting more and more frequent and more intense.

I tried to ignore it and reached for a bar of soap and saw my fingernails, and they were blue. And that's when I was like, DONE. That's it, something is wrong as fuck, I'm going to the hospital. I jumped out of the shower and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and saw my lips looked like they were turning grey! I was getting scared at this point.

I collapsed on the sofa to catch my breath and told Mike to call a taxi to the hospital. I remember waiting for the elevator to take us downstairs was agony, but once I stepped outside into the winter air it felt so refreshing, and I wondered for a bit if I wasn't just having a bad anxiety attack (with blue nails/lips? Yeah RIGHT!) and that maybe I'd be OK.

I remember telling Mike that when we got to the ER to make sure to tell triage that I was having breathing problems so they'd see me right away. He barely had to; when we got there, walking from the cab through the ER doors and over to the triage window was enough for me, and I as I tried to sit on the waiting room chairs, I fell on the floor, prompting everyone around us to spring up and tell us to go on ahead of them.
Except this one old lady, who I'll never forget as long as I live. She kept saying "What about me? I need to go in, too. What about meeeee?"
I was on the floor, struggling to breathe, which everyone else noticed. And she was bitching away like a bitchy bitch. While I sat there on the ER floor wondering what the fuck was going on with my body, I remember thinking, "Shut up. Shut the fuck up. I'm having trouble breathing and CAN'T EVEN STAND ON MY OWN YET YOU'RE WELL ENOUGH TO WHINE, SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!" Even though I felt like my lungs had completely deflated, I remember being so angry! Haha.

Anyway, they got me into the ER right away and took my vitals and then had me wait on a stretcher for about a half hour, during which I got bored (and annoyed with the person next to me who wouldn't stop complaining about everything) so I put on my mp3-player and they came by at some point to do an EKG, chest X-ray, and take my bloods. They told me they wanted to check for a blood clot. I remember saying to Mike how much a blood clot would suck, but that it wouldn't be the worst thing ever. I distinctly remember saying WELL, BETTER A BLOOD CLOT THAN SOMETHING LIKE CANCER, LOL. Holy fuck. In retrospect, that comment.....grrr.
This is why people who say things like "OMG you shouldn't say things like that!" in response to comments like "imagine we got into a car accident?" or "I hope he dies in a fire" or whatever need to be told HOW FUCKING STUPID THEY SOUND. Saying things doesn't change the outcome of anything, OBVIOUSLY.


Um, so anyway. The blood folks come RUSHING back about 45 minutes later seeming a little nervous, saying something must have gone wrong with the tests because the results they read "couldn't possibly be right". I'm like whatevs! Take all the blood you want, folks. So, stab, draw, repeat. I'm just happy to be lying down and to have people taking care of me...and good music to block out the freaks!

45 minutes they come back again, except this time they're a)wearing masks,  b) they stick a mask on me, and c) they're freaking. the fuck. out.  They have to get me into isolation IMMEDIATELY. I'm like uhhhh...what? Wait, what's going? So they wheel me into this tiny little room with sealed glass doors and even Mike's not allowed inside without a mask and GOWN. No one is. By this point, I'm actually starting to get a little bit scared. Do I have some kind of fucked-up virus? I mean, really. The only place I've ever seen this type of isolation shit is in the movies, where people get quarantined because they picked up some kind of mutant virus or whatever.

...annnnd I think that's all I'll write for today. Mike just got home from work, and it'll be hard to concentrate on this with him here. (Tiny apartment, you see.) But at least I got all this out! It was quite therapeutic. It's been a weird day. At least I was working today to help keep my mind off things, but it was barely enough (not to mention that it was a VERY uneventful day at work, too). I couldn't stop thinking about what was happening a year ago today. I didn't think just a date would affect me so much but I was wrong. It hit me a lot more when I got home.

As I wrote on Facebook, I have so much going on in my mind right now (but writing out this super long blog entry really helped). I can't explain how I feel though. To copy & paste from my Facebook: There's no words for how I feel tonight. It's a weird mix of spooky, melancholy, victorious, grateful, anxious, lucky, surprised, confused, lonely, relieved, sad, and blessed. To summarize: it's fucking weird, dude.