19th December 2015
Well blog number two. Firstly, my apologies there wasn’t one last week. I have been writing this one for almost two weeks now but it has taken a lot out of me and therefore taken me so much longer than usual. Sorry! This also wasn’t exactly what I thought I’d be writing about this week in all honesty but hey seeing as I said I was gonna keep this real, why not just write from the exact place I’m at – hooked onto and wired up to all sorts of machines, medication, oxygen and infusions in the heart of the hospital’s intensive/critical care unit where it’s all go go go and very far from my day to day normality.
You’re going to have to bare with me. My mind is slow, my energy is low and my oxygen levels have been somewhat below average for a while now. As I said before I’ve been attempting to write this blog since early last week and it’s been a bit of an uphill battle! As far as intensive care goes, it’s not the place where you come to be still, find peace and let the words flow from within. This place is beyond crazy and I have given my own head a new found pardon with the realisation that there are much more wacky and out there places to be than in my mind!
The last weeks have been a total rollercoaster where on occasion we’ve even veered off track and soared through some patches of whirlwind extremities. And today is the first time where I can sit back on my bed, breathe, take a moment and just reflect on all that’s gone on.
I had an asthma attack – almost a month ago now. Sunday night the 15th of November. Who knew watching the opening show of I’m a Celebrity could have such an impact!! From that moment it’s all been a bit of a blur really. From being rushed into hospital, spending 9 days on intensive care, to finally being discharged, to relapsing again just a week later and spending another 15 days on intensive care. Today is day 25 in hospital and I’ve finally been moved on to a ward and the countdown for home has begun. With severe asthma, vocal chord spasms, and high stress levels also having an affect on shutting down my airways – all of it thrown in to the mix, it’s certainly not been the easiest three or four weeks. I’ve had to deal with some major fears regarding hospitals, needles, doctors, being very much trapped and I’m not gonna lie – lying in a bed in the same spot in the same room with the same view not moving much for 25 days is also not listed high on my skill set! For those of you who know me I have undiagnosed ‘too much energy and can’t sit still syndrome’ as it is.
But you know what? I’m grateful. I could sit here and rant and rave about how hard life has been lately or how my life can never just be simple. How I missed my birthday and might still even miss Christmas. Or how there’s always something being thrown at me to hinder it or stop me from doing all the many things I want to do but what’s the point? This is it! This is the one life I’ve been given and I have to just take it in my stride. I hate hospitals but over the past month I have met so many absolutely totally phenomenally incredible people who do a job I could never do and most people will hands down take for granted day in day out. But actually without them I’m really not quite sure where I’d be right now. I’ve been on the same critical care unit for over three weeks and in that time seen 3 people die. It’s only a 6-bed unit. To me that puts life into perspective.
About 3 weeks ago a lady got wheeled in on a bed opposite me on the unit. Her name was Darcy (not exactly sure of the spelling sorry). I was trying to guess her age with a few of my friends and we decided on between 60-65. She was 34. That’s just 7 years older than me… From the information I could gather on her over the next days she had anorexia at it’s most severe and her body had started bleeding internally and shutting down. She had no reserves left to fight. She was sitting it up and we exchanged words on that Thursday. On the Friday her body deteriorated and she had to be tubed and a machine was breathing for her. I spent days just looking at her. There wasn’t more than two or three metres between our beds. There she was. Just 34 years old. She had three kids under the age of 12. Her sister, Gemma, came in every single day and we used to chat for ages. They did everything together and were so close. Just a few days later Darcy passed away. Even now when I write this it hurts and I want to cry. I want to cry at the precious life that was lost and wasted. I want to cry for her children who will never know their mum. I want to cry for Gemma who lost not just her sister but her best friend. Life is precious. We only get one shot. And this is my biggest lesson I seem to be learning from all of this. Four weeks on and I’ve seen people die, people come in because their bodies are in a complete mess due to drugs, or due to unmanaged and uncared for diabetes. Diabetes so uncared for limbs have been lost and had to be amputated resulting in lives changed forever. The list goes on and on but I would say at least 80% of the time people are rushed into hospital in critical conditions because of a lack of self care. It’s why I ended up in the condition I was. I’ve had asthma for 14 years yet couldn’t tell you the first thing about it! I never used my preventative inhalers because in that moment I didn’t need them!! And that’s all well and good and bodies seem to have an incredible threshold for being able to absorb and withstand whatever is thrown at them… till a point. And then it caves. And for some it caves and you catch it just in time. For others it caves and it’s beyond help. Darcy came in and for her it was too late. Hope was the only thing left going for her. The hope of a miracle that just didn’t come.
I look around and I see a world of lost people. Who are living with a mindset that ‘it’ll be ok’. Who live like they are fine today and right now and that’s all that matters. But in four weeks i’ve seen and realised that living like that isn’t ‘fine’. Of course there are things that happen which are out of our control. That’s life. But most people only spend 24 to 48 hours in critical care so in three weeks I’ve seen a fair amount of people come and go and it’s just given me a newfound insight into self care and self management. And for me I know that it lies at the heart of my identity and who I am to myself. You can’t love someone you hate! And you can’t really care for someone you ain’t too bothered about!
And that’s the crux of my post today I guess. As I continue my personal therapy journey and continue to work through my own years of abuse, the horrific memories that still at times paralyse me at night, and the places I still can’t go to in my head, let alone physically… I just need to stop and think of the impact. And if I’ve realised the impact in my own life then maybe others can realise the impact in their lives. If there are parts in us we hate, or we have never come to terms with, we don’t care about or shut out… what long term affect might it be having without us even having any knowledge of it whatsoever?
I didn’t care about my asthma. It wasn’t affecting me day to day and I wasn’t massively bothered about my health. 15th November that changed and I’ve just spent a month in and out of hospital because of it. It’s been painful and really tough at times. I’ve cried, I’ve felt out of control, I’ve been angry, frustrated and felt so alone. It never even needed to get to that point. I hope you can take a moment at some point today to just reflect and make sure you don’t have to go through the same. Because it happens and it happens when we least expect it and usually at the most inconvenient time too! And then all we can do is wish. Look back, regret and wish we could have just…
Anyway! I can now finally see the light and I should be home within the next few days!!! And as always I just want to say thank you to so many people. I have an absolutely totally incredible support network around me who just stand with me through anything and everything no matter what. And I also want to say the biggest thank you from the bottom of my heart to the MANY doctors and the PHENOMENAL Critical Care (CCU) nursing team. I could name them, each and every one of them, individually. Without them I can guarantee these weeks would have looked very differently. You’ve all played a HUGE part in getting me home. So thank you.
Have a great week everyone and hopefully next week I’ll be writing from home! :-)))
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