Strange New World: The Awakening

Strange New World: The Awakening

     The day my mom saved my life she found me unconscious and shirtless on my bed in bloody vomit. She couldn’t wake me. She immediately took my blood pressure. It was incredibly low. She and dad couldn’t wake me. I was too heavy to carry to the car, so she called an ambulance.
 
     I don’t remember that trip to the hospital. In fact, I was unconscious for over a day. I awoke to the news I had cirrhosis of the liver and double pneumonia. This happened right about the time the Covid death toll was rising, and hospitals were swamped with patients. I found out quickly what a code blue was because I heard it announced every day, multiple times, in the ICU. How was it I was in a hospital? How sick did all of this really mean? Was I going to have a code blue?
 
     In and out of consciousness, I kept thinking I should probably tell my parents I was in the hospital—that I was in a gown and there were medical people around me constantly. I thought my folks might get worried of my whereabouts as the weekend was passing. I had a phone. Right? Where’s my phone?  But I didn’t panic. I just knew they needed to know.
 
     They needed to know where I was and how bewildered I was about this new state I was in. I knew it was going to be a turning point in my life if I lived through everything.  What would they think about that? Was I a failure? It’s irresponsible for me to not let them know where I am, but how do I let them know where I am? I had all these thoughts and then I would pass out, wake up, and replay all these exact thoughts again. Over and over in a cycle. It was like Sisyphus but without the big rock and the sunshine.
 
     The weekend was slipping by, and I had to let my parents know where I was. Where was my phone? I had to tell them that a rubber band had been placed around my esophagus because I was bleeding and that I was wearing an oxygen mask on account of my sick lungs and that I didn’t get to eat or drink or pee on my own. I couldn’t tell from one moment to the next if I had mentioned my concerns out loud or just thought them.
 
     I don’t remember much those first few days. My speech was terrible, and I didn’t even have total recognition of this. I understood what was going on, but I was very foggy about it all. It was like some collage of hospital impressionism of images and feelings. I wasn’t allowed to eat for a while and the only water I could have initially was in the form of bits of ice.
 
     One day the nutritionist came in to test my ability to chew and swallow food. That is so bizarre. Just typing that right now. So bizarre. 
 
     I could only have little bits to eat, but boy was that stuff great. The nutritionist fed me with a spoon. I had some Jell-o and something else and was about to go for the mother lode—granola. I was slowly building up through the harder things to chew then swallow, chew then swallow. Suddenly one of the nurses realized I was bleeding a little from my arm.
 
     “Stop feeding! He’s bleeding.” The nutritionist pulled the spoon away from me and slowly gathered my food. My food. Aw man! I wanted that granola like I never had before because I never had before wanted granola. But I really wanted it NOW. TODAY. I don’t remember what my first true meal was. Famished after not having eaten for probably a week, I was somehow patient about eating. I guess I started to realize I was lucky to be alive.
 
     It’s sort of complicated to explain how I felt. There was so much uncertainty about my entire life. What have I done wrong and what was I going to do and what were the repercussions for the poor mishandling of my health? There was constant attention to make sure my health improved. That kept me from worrying too much. I think the drugs helped with that as well. I had no idea I was going to be in the hospital for 24 days. I kind of just gave myself up to the hospital and lived as a patient with people taking care of my essential needs.
 
     One day some things came back to me. I remembered being wheeled into the hospital in a wheelchair and how I had to stand up and take off my clothes so I could get in a gown. I remembered my pants! They were in a hurry to get me into a room to check me out and that memory flash-forwarded me to a moment where I was awake in a gown wondering where my pants were. “They fell on the floor, I think!  I really like those pants. They were corduroy or something. I can’t leave the hospital without somebody retrieving my pants.”
 
     I told my nurse or my mom…somebody…that, “I remember coming into the hospital!” and they told me I was completely unconscious when that happened. They told me I was wheeled in on a stretcher and I wasn’t stripped and placed in a gown until I got into ICU where my pants were cut free from my body and thrown away.
     
     No more of those pants. In my super-doped up state I had dreamt this memory. There was going to be a lot more of this to come. That was going to be a new facet in my life to make more appearances. Dreaming Awake.