I still remember waking up the first time I DKAed. I opened my eyes, looked at Mum who was giving me the everything is okay smile despite everything not being okay (It's the same smile she gave me before she told me Dad had died. Ironically, I didn't remember that smile until I woke up). I remember thinking 4 thoughts: 1) What the hell happened? 2) Where is my baby bump? 3) Oh fuck, Pam is going to kill me. 4) I'm going to die, aren't I?
And then Mum said, "Everything is going to be okay."
Then I looked to my left and saw Bryan. He was giddy, almost jumping for joy wearing the same blue button down shirt he wore the first day we met. And I knew he wore it on purpose and was thankful for that. Despite the breathing tube down my throat I managed to smile at him. I could see the love in his eyes, his wife was back and he had missed her dearly.
I had been under for 5 days and within a few minutes of the breathing tube being taken out, I was speaking.
This time was different.
I don't remember waking up. I don't remember a breathing tube down my throat. I don't remember them taking it out. When I first realized my nurses, I had no clue they had been taking care of me for a few days. And when I woke up this time, there was definately something wrong.
I had been under for 7 days. When they tried to take me off the respirator, I was breathing to fast so back down the throat the breathing tube went. When they woke me up, I didn't wake up. A whole day went by and nothing. This was Bryan's worst fear. It would be anyone's worst fear. You hear about it everyso often, people being put into a coma and never waking up. They put me back under and tried again the next day. It took my four hours to wake up. Last time it took 30 minutes. I didn't speak for a few days because I couldn't and when I finally did, I ended up sounding like I had a disability.
Mum and Bryan now had a new fear, brain damage. I think it created a lot of questions for Bryan. What if I had brain damge and could not regain abilities I once had? Could he devote his life to taking are of me knowing I was trapped inside my mind, a shell of what I used to be? It hit Mum pretty hard that I might be this way permanently, no longer the eloquent vocal daughter she loved.
After a brain scan, there was good news - my brain was active and healthy. Also, no brain tumors. The nurses decided there was probably sugar still in my brain messing with my communication and language area. The remedy, TV. Time to stimulate her brain. Bryan had them keep it on food network for me.
Although I had been awake for a few days, I did not know it. My mind was constantly going from reality into a dream state where I couldn't tell the difference between the two. The only reality part I remember is when Bryan told me I had DKAed again, this time on the couch fully unconscious where he literally had to carry me to the car and into the ER, and that I was in the hospital. It turns out everything else was a dream.
Except they weren't dreams. They were nightmares. My innermost fears played out in front of me. Nightmares where I couldn't figure out how one ended and why another began. I had four of them. Each one more gruesome, more horrible, more debilitating than the previous. To the point where I thought I was in reality causing minor paranoia. When I started to actually hit reality, I cried, I freaked out, I convinced myself Bryan had left me, and asked questions that didn't make sense.
This is how bad my coma was. It was a parallel universe that left me crippled and alone in the end. There are still days where I fear that this reality is actually a dream I made up in my mind to cope with with my actual reality. I fear I'll wake up one day back in the parallel universe.
Obviously, this time around, the coma did a number on me.
No comments:
Post a Comment