Wow, what a year so far!
I started this blog in the darkest of moods and with the intention of shuffling off my Mortal Coil if things didn’t turn around and then things turned around and I discovered that it seemed that there still might be a thing or two for which I would require a Mortal Coil. I purchased a nice van and was all prepared to take off on a cross country odyssey.
I didn’t get far: just a few hundred miles and my leg decided to stop working — with a vengeance! The pain was excruciating just sitting still, so in agony I turned my covered wagon around and headed back to Terra Cognito and checked into the hospital. It turned out that I had an 18 inch blood clot in my right femoral artery. So into the hospital I settled in for MAJOR vascular surgery.
My story of that whole adventure (along with misadventures embedded therein) is another essay altogether. Let’s just say, without trying to make it sound like an understatement, that the day after my surgery I died. Remember me saying that at one point I purposefully had that very thought in mind and by my own hand? Well, surprise surprise, just when things were looking positive and life was starting to acquire worthwhile aspects life decided to have a little payback at me.
WHAT!? YOU DIED!?
Well, don’t be silly! I got better, of course.
I was lying in I.C.U., still heavily sedated, and came just enough out of the sedation to remember puking, and immediately breathing back in my own vomit. The last thing I remembered before losing consciousness was drowning.
24 hours later I came back into the “breathing” world and was told that I had indeed drowned and was subsequently resuscitated. I thanked the doctor who performed the resuscitation and the following ventilation of my lungs with one of those hateful, hateful tubes. He did a good thing. I guess. In any case, I was sincerely grateful. How can anyone NOT be grateful when someone does such a thing for them, eh?
Here’s a cute note. Before the operation I had issued an Advanced Directive which required any hospital staff to NOT resuscitate me if anything of that sort were to happen. But that DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) Advanced Directive was not in sight at the time of the incident. Nope. It was in the drawer next to the bed where I had left it after signing it. So in spite of myself, I was alive anyway. Cute? Freaking Hilarious!
The doctor told me that had such a thing happened to me at home (“home” HA!) that the ambulance would never have reached me in time. That is, if anyone had known what was going on and had the sense to call for help. Living like I do in a “van down by the river” no one would have known until the smell started to attract attention.
Anyway, here I am, still kicking, still breathing, and thinking “Gee, how ironic and slightly moronic as well.”
All this began about two months ago and I am still a long way from being completely recovered from the surgery. I moved back into the van down by the banks of the aforementioned river, and am trying to figure out what’s up next.
I’ve started to write a couple of times before now but I get very tired very easily lately. Maybe this post here is a good sign. Maybe not. Who knows? Drop me a line with any clues. I’m drawing blanks.
Ever get the feeling that God is having just TOO much fun with you?
Ham