There are long stories and there are short ones. This one is just one to stop the cryptic Facebook posts and fill in those incredibly curious folks.
First off, it’s Saturday and yesterday at 4:00pm I got out of the hospital after an 11 day “visit”. I went in because I have intestinal issues and I thought I was super blocked up. What it turned out to be was something called Pulmonary Edema, or water on the lungs. My legs and feet and even right hand was swollen and things were basically shutting down because my heart was pumping so hard to keep it at bay.
Yeah, I was a short time away from being too far gone to really address it at all and biting the big one. I had to be forced by medication to clear out the excess buildup. I have severe COPD and my blood oxygen used to be just good enough to move around the apartment. I won’t go into more but there I was, in the Hospital and thinking this is the end. My thinking was not the greatest because of the lack of oxygen I was getting, and y’all know how intense and emotional I am, not a great mix. I had flashbacks to the last time I saw my Mom before she passed and her very swollen legs and feet, and my brother Randy that passed because he couldn’t breathe. My head was swimming. On top of it all I had a roommate who’s family made it a 24hr a day constant onslaught of people, languages, and emotions hard to deal with my own.
The first few days were a toss up, I needed oxygen therapy and meds, and not everyone responds o it and it took me a few tugs on the line before I caught on the hook and things started to improve. I had to wear something called a bi-pap at night to help me out with breathing and to keep the fluid situation at bay so it didn’t start creeping back. Think of it like a dam with holes in it, and the therapy was plugging the holes but they could erode away if I didn’t use it.
Days in the hospital are hard when you’re by yourself with all of the thoughts on your mind, end of life, things you need to do and say, unfinished business, the works. So I am not a phone guy and that is all I was left with. I only had my wife and neighborhood bestie to visit me, and a few others that offered, which meant the world but it was far short of what I had grown up to know. It was in those moments that I felt so empty and hollow that after all of these years there’s really nobody left in my everyday life, or life in general. Sure I have Facebook friends and real friends through it, but they are far away and burdened with their own lives and issues. Of course I went to the worst case scenarios, felt sorry for myself that I didn’t do enough to warrant visits from people, and posted cryptic Facebook posts to inform people without catastrophizing out loud. I was and am grateful, I get to write this today instead of someone spreading the news of my unfortunate passing. I inhaled too much stuff, I smoked too many cigarettes and didn’t take care of myself. I got sedentary because I thought that everyone hated me and I ended up with nowhere to go and nobody to talk to.
I talked to the spiritual folks that hospitals have, and I was going through these thoughts with one of them when I came to the realization that I just didn’t want to be forgotten after a few weeks. I wanted people to know me as I am now after all the regretful things and ways that I thought people saw me as. You leave a 1000 different versions of yourself along the way and my worst ones were the ones that stuck in my head. As I was saying that I got a real God shot as my recovery folks call it, I got a Facebook message from someone that I hadn’t heard a damn thing about in over 45 years. He remembered me, my sister’s old boyfriend that I wanted to emulate when I was young. He asked about her and I sadly informed her of her passing years ago. But we are now connected and I have a picture of him around here somewhere I have to pass along. He is a Grandpa, and has a Harley and I thought, what a wonderful life… In those moments my Hospital time changed and I could start healing again. Sadly it ended with a family member passing way too early, and my great niece and nephew now without either parent as they navigate an uncertain future that we all share.
I get a chance to finish up a few things, to close out on a better note and leave a few more thoughts and things passed down on this blog of mine. But most of all I get the chance to love some more, that commodity of hope we need more of in this world. It has always been my example of proof of a higher power, something bigger than us. I really just wanted to fill in the blanks to those that visit of what the heck is going on this is not the time for my deep thinking essays of self. I was always about family, of people, because their being was the thing I took pride in knowing. It was never what I could get from them, but what they meant to me in my heart and life. They were my inspiration, my guides, and my reason to. Because I loved them so much. So if I never get the chance to say goodbye, chances are, that in my way I loved you. Thanks everyone.