I've never really talked about this with anyone but at the start of December 2021, literally the midnight after my older brother's birthday, I got hospitalized for about a month. I started feeling extreme back pain that I thought I could just sleep off but regardless of the position I tried, it felt like my chest was caving in. Which restricted my breathing, of course, then led to an elevated heartrate. Something that panicked me enough to believe I was having a heart attack. Not the inability to breath but the potential heart attack was what scared me. I don't know how much time had passed between when it first started and when I actually decided to call it in but in that time, I was just looking up whether I was actually having a heart attack or not.

In a relatively packed emergency room, one of the darkest well-lit rooms I've ever been in which was confusing, I was being isolated. This was all happening around the time when the Omicron variant was really starting to spread so they were taking some precautions. I tried to stay calm as best I could but I was essentially suffocating in a sectioned off room within emergency, full of other patients yelling for nurses overnight. I tried to be friendly with one of the nurses who was just getting it from one of the other patients, she told me she regularly dealt with drunks or people that were high so it didn't bother them that some older man was being annoying about wanting a room before everyone else.

They eventually get me to the hospital proper, isolated again, this time asking if I had tuberculosis. It wasn't until later, after they determined I didn't have it, that they were really only asking me about it and whether I've traveled recently 'cuz I'm Asian. I thought it was funny, I moved here when I was 4 and the only time I left was to visit family in LA when I was 5. I was stable enough but still having issues breathing, requiring the need for an oxygen machine that seemed to be set pretty high. They did enough tests to determine I needed surgery. I was getting tested pretty much my entire time I was there so I didn't have any opportunity to eat or anything, by the time I was back in my room and when I should've gotten something to eat I was told I couldn't 'cuz I was going to surgery "soon". It wasn't soon.

I wake up in the ICU, all wired up, a tube down my throat, with more tubes coming out of my chest attached to a pump and they tell me I had necrotizing pneumonia. I guess enough liquid had seeped through my lung, causing my breathing to be restricted so they had to drain it out and put me on antibiotics so the holes in my lung could heal up, I think. Bedridden, unable to really move 'cuz of the tubes attached to my body, with nothing to distract my mind and not being able to receive visitors 'cuz of Omicron- I've always been a loner but that experience broke me a couple times over the course of the next couple of weeks. I was pretty much one of the only patients that was conscious in the ICU, it seemed like, so one of the nurses interacted with me quite regularly, more than the others who usually just came in for check ups, tests then leave. They would talk to me about their family, some who even worked in the same hospital, their own surgery they had a while back, their work abroad, even tried to convince me to join them at the hospital after I healed up, joking about how we could continue the Filipino nurse stereotype.

After determining I was healthy enough, and with the lack of space within the ICU, I eventually get moved to the hospital proper again. I get moved into a room with another patient who was already there, the nurses told me they pretty much slept all day. Their older daughter visited, I'd hear them pray and she would sing to him to help them remember. They died a few nights later. I woke up to them sounding like they were drowning and a bunch of nurses attending to them.

I was told by the doctors that I've pretty much healed up, I still had a lot of liquid constricting the lung but enough had been pumped out that it was safe to be released soon. I wanted out of there as soon as possible but was convinced to have the surgery again to drain out the rest of the fluid.

I wake up, not in ICU this time but waiting to be transferred to a new room, my heart feeling like it was prior to being hospitalized and funnily talking to the nurse seemingly delirious after having just gotten out of surgery. I get moved to my new room, new roommate, had to be pumped with painkillers this time. The first surgery for some reason I didn't have much issues with, maybe I had already been being pumped with painkillers by the time I woke up in ICU, and this was because I came out straight from surgery, I don't know. Nurses noticed I wasn't eating properly after the surgery, I didn't have an appetite, on top of the food not really being great. Also I would hear my new roommate constantly vomiting whenever we were supposed to eat, which may have contributed to me not having an appetite. They would get violent with the nurses whenever they needed to do blood tests on them. That roommate also died a few nights later.

One of the nurses recognized how severely depressed I was and offered some counseling from one of their experts. I accepted at first, they suggested I try out some meds, maybe join them for group therapy but I eventually opted out. Probably a mistake. Physically, they finally determined enough, or all, the liquid had been drained out of me and my surgeon came late at night to check on me and decided on the spot they would remove the tubes and pump essentially anchoring me down for pretty much the past three weeks. Though still obviously recovering from surgery wounds I was relieved that I could finally move around. That first night without the tubes attached, I woke up to the side of my bed completely soaked with leftover liquid and blood that seeped out. The rest of my stay at the hospital was mostly physical therapy, being bedridden for most of it, I had to basically get used to walking around again.

It's been around eight months since all this happened, I'm technically "recovered". That was really my first time ever getting hospitalized, I try not to think about what I went through but at least once a day some part of that experience will flash in my brain. Especially on days when it feels like I still have the tubes & pump attached to my lung. I still have trouble sleeping in any other position but directly facing up, I used to be more of a side sleeper. My scars don't hurt but the area around it constantly feels numb. All this shit running through my head, every day for the past eight months.

More than recalling all of that, I think about how I considered not calling it in. I don't know if I've developed some hypochondriac paranoia because of what I went through but I'm starting to feel like I'm having trouble breathing again. Not like my chest is caving in like the first time but I'm breathing deeper to the point of actually noticing myself do it. And if it turns out to be something legitimate again, I've found myself wondering if maybe this time I won't call it in and just let myself suffocate alone just to avoid going through that entire ordeal again. I've always had issues with my mental health, ever since I was in high school, it never occurred to me that my physical health deteriorating would destroy it even further. I’ve been brought down low many times before but these days have felt the lowest...

I guess this wasn’t showing up properly ‘cuz I don’t do too goo with posting shit? I dunno. Separating it now from the Michael as Gerki post, though it’s pretty old at this point anyway but let’s try this again...

After an embarrassing amount of hours (1000+) in GTA Online I experienced something I never thought I would and frankly, something I completely forgot existed.

During my routine grind cycle, I started up a resupply mission through the Terrorbyte and as I exited I thought it was odd that the weather had turned into a heavy storm when it was completely clear around midday before I entered the truck. I also thought it was odd that on the minimap that the supply icon was green when it’s usually blue but I second guessed myself and just went about my usual business. That’s how much of a nerd I am about this game though, that I actually noticed the colour change of an inconsequential map icon.

Regardless, thinking it was a regular van mission I called in my cargobob so I could airlift it over to my bunker then I second guessed myself again and decided to check the full map to see where these supplies actually were. It turned out to be just outside the Zancudo military base which is never a location where bunker supplies usually spawn, usually it’s a tank inside the actual base. 

So I got excited and ditched my slow as fuck cargobob and flew my Hunter attack helicopter over instead. As I got closer to the area, my vehicle started to lose radio reception, the engine cut out on me making me stall midair and I proceeded to plummet straight into the river below, which I thought was a pretty funny touch. Thankfully I was already relatively close enough to the ground so I didn’t end up fully destroying my vehicle nor get my character killed.