Originally posted on September 20, 2007
Category : Life
My Blood Blessing
As you know, I've given preface/warnings before about the seriousness of one of my blog entries, today will be no exception. I sit here in my hospital room tripped out and VERY grateful to be alive but not for all the obvious reasons. Early Monday morning, before my alarm for work goes off, I go and do my regular weekday morning routine. Before I even get out of bed, I feel a hot, sickly sensation in my stomach. When I get to the bathroom, I sort of collapse on the toilet seat and right then, I'm sure I'm going to vomit. 🤮 I grab the trash can behind me and go to town. So, I'm sitting there vomiting my brains out, but it doesn't feel like food. I can clearly see, even with the moody illumination of the bathroom night-light, it's an unfamiliar, "liquidy" and dark red substance. Not food. Makes sense. The night before, I had a glass of red wine. After the thick, liquidy expulsion was purged from my system, I felt a little better but not great. I muster enough energy to stand up and turn the regular bathroom light on. I look in the garbage can and see that the thick, dark red, liquidy expulsion was blood. Huge gelatinous clumps of blood haphazardly splattered on all the usual bathroom garbage. 🩸 Gross. Where the hell did that come from? I'm not in pain, why on Earth would I be vomiting blood? Am I wrong? Is that just how the food I ate the night before looked after digestion? Oh well. I can barely muster the energy to make it back to my bed. I mean, I'd take two steps and then I'd feel like I was going to pass out. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to take a vacation day and sleep it off (whatever it is). When I finally make it to my bed, I just collapse on it. I'm lying there, diagonally, yelling for my sister. I guess she can't hear me. I'll just lie there a few moments more to gather my strength. I'll check on her to see if she feels okay. Maybe if she's sick too, we can just take the day off together. So, after about 30 seconds rest, I get up and go to my sister's room. I ask her, "How are you feeling this morning?" She sits up in her bed, looks at me with the usual morning swelling but still beautiful and says, "I'm okay, just really sleepy." I say, "Okay, well, I've been vomiting blood and I and don't feel that great." I turn to leave her room and all I remember next, is a loud thump and then my forehead on my bedroom floor. I'm lying there and I can hear my sister from her room yell, "Blood?!" Then, I guess after hearing the thump, she runs into my room and starts yelling my name. I can tell she's really scared and by my being the consummate older sister I am, I'm trying to assure her that I'm okay. But as strong as my will was, I couldn't will one appendage, one eyelid, one eyebrow to move. I just laid there with my forehead on the floor, desperately trying to gather enough energy to pick myself up. I gathered just enough energy to take about four steps into my hallway, and the next thing I remember is my forehead on the smooth surface of the hall floor. This time, I'm sort of kneeling. I mean, I had both knees together, kind of sitting on my heels but slumped over forward. I vomit again but I'm thinking it wasn't significant enough to mention but I can't move. By this time, my sister is calling someone and frantically pacing around the house, yelling my name and begging me to stay with her. I wanted to answer her but I didn't have the energy. I stayed there, slumped on the hallway floor, then she starts to cry. I can hear her crying, and then I start to cry. She's begging me to stay with her. She's too upset. And it's killing me (figuratively...well, maybe not that figuratively you'll later discover). So, I pick myself up to show her I'm okay. I've already resigned myself to going to the hospital, but I want her to take me. 🏥 She'll see. I'll walk to the front room, calmly sit at the dinner table and wait for her to bring the truck around to the front door. Well, I make it to the dinner table but I fall to my knees again. I then realize that sis is talking to the 911 operator. ⛑️ I couldn't actually understand everything that was being said, but I can tell that the 911 operator is giving her instructions. In between instructions, sis yells at me to look at her. I can clearly feel that my chin is resting squarely on my chest (sitting there in the chair). Sis yells again for me to look at her. I can hear the absolute panic in her voice. So, with all my might, I lift my head up but go too far, so my head flops all the way back, as if I have no bones in my neck. I lift up my arm so I can pull my head up but I just can't make it. I'm not sure how, maybe my sis pulls my head up, but as soon as I'm eye level, I see about six gigantic, gorgeous men in my living room (The Fort Worth Fire Dept). 🚒 I then quietly ask sis to get me a bra. She answers, "What?! A bra?!" The next time I open my eyes (from what I think is a mere blink), she's holding my arm, with the bra in her hands. I get nauseous again. Sis grabs the same bathroom garbage can, so I sit there in my living room, dry heaving with six gigantic, gorgeous men watching me. It was then that I could hear them talking among themselves about the amount of blood in the garbage can. Sis also tells them that there was also a lot of blood in the hall (where I was slumped earlier) and that she thinks she stepped in it. Next, I faintly remember being strapped to a stretcher and then suddenly seeing the "ceiling" of the ambulance. 🚑 Instantly, I feel better after getting the fluids from my EMS savior (a kindly woman I didn't notice before). Fast forward. I'm sitting there in the ER. They (the medical powers that be) took a little blood from me and left me there with my sis. 💉 Apparently, during the may-lay at home, sis called mom. I found out later, sis called my mother to tell her we were on our way to the hospital (by ambulance) but begged her not to go in the house (because of all of the blood everywhere). She shows up a few minutes later, her face completely drenched with tears (after getting sis' earlier phone call, she was so scared and confused that she went inside the house, despite the explicit warning not to). After a few out-of-this world, Alien-type noteworthy experiences in the ER (which I hope to write about at a later date), I was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit. 🥼🩹 I was an absolute medical marvel. 🩺 Everyone that came in my room, to draw blood or take me for tests or procedures would first say, "I hear you came in at a hemoglobin count of 4! A 4 isn't compatible with life". At least four different people told me that exact thing, that exact combination words, in that exact order, so it must be true. Medical people tell me that it's almost impossible to be conscious and talking at a 4 (a normal hemoglobin count should actually be between 15 to 18). 🩸 Leave it to me, if it's unusual-I'll have some connection to it. I stayed in the ICU until this afternoon. I'm now in a (semi) private room, writing this now, connected to enough IVs and monitors to be confused with a creature from the Sci Fi channel. 👽 I sit here, not just thankful for the beautiful flowers from family and friends or the daily morning vigil my brother makes to give sis a break or the fact that my father made a 4 hour trip from Houston in about 2 hours or my mother, that has constantly kept up a brave face after being faced with losing another child in her lifetime or my beautiful brave sister that saved my life (by God's will). I'm grateful for life itself. The day before my blood blessing, I was shopping with my sister, living life like I'd done every day before that. It's amazing how truly fragile life is. It's very important to tell people that you love, that you love them. It's important to not complain about all those irritating, annoying little things that always seem to find themselves in your daily life. It sounds so cliché but it's so absolutely true. Live every day like it's your last. Not in a reckless, haphazard manner. But by being kind and good and leaving a legacy that you would be proud of. I am. I'm not afraid to die. I'm far more afraid of what my dying would do to the people I love, sometimes that's just enough to keep you going. That last tiny, itty bitty thing that gives you the will to keep going when your body wants to give up. I sit here in my hospital bed, writing this, eternally grateful for another day to tell this story. Honestly, I'm not even sure how long I'll be here. Maybe a few more days. Who knows? Does it really matter anyway? Hopefully though, there will be many more days to write, laugh, love and live. But nothing's really promised, is it?
Posted : 2007-09-19 06:24:00 PM Created : 2007-09-19 07:12:00 PM Visible to : Public
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