#neurdotically

It kinda hit all at once, as I sat on my bed that night.  The news I had received earlier that Tuesday sank into my brain letter by letter, planting a very serious understanding within my mind.  In that moment, everything else in the room faded to the background.  The usual banging around of the other tenants muted themselves.  It was like I was the only person in that entire apartment building. More like everyone in the city of Tacoma vacated to the outskirts to give me some space.  It was just me and those words.  It was just me and the phrase: “You could have died.”

This phrase is not attached to something grandiose.  I was not almost hit by a bus, or eaten by a megalodon.  I did not almost lose my life defending my friends from a hoard of hell beasts or a pack of insatiable zombies.  I was not the virgin sacrifice to ensure that Mount Rainier remains dormant for another century or so.  (Although, what the hell?  If you’re in need, give me a ring.  I’m not guaranteeing the two of us will hit it off, but I think we could be fast and great friends.  I’ll buy you all some time to get outta dodge when things get bleak.)

If Death had had its way, I would have never known that I was on my out.  One moment I’m here, the next I’m not.  It would have been a magic trick that, I would hope, not many would applaud for at its completion.

I will say, even if that was the case, I would not have gone quietly.

You see, last year, I was admitted to the hospital for a routine appendicitis.  (Please see [Appendix Here] post.)  The fucker, we’ll call him Fester, had dilated itself to 11 cm, swelling to three times its normal size.  (Seeing as the surgeon pulled Fat Fester out through my belly button laparoscopically, the bestie, Bea, has made me an honorary woman…since I essentially gave birth. Thanks, Bea, I will, with all sincerity, carry this honor with me always.)

The medical report indicated the appendix had started to, well, fester and become necrotic, zombified, if you will.  Bacteria was able to slip through the dead tissue, making my blood septic.  Let the record show, one never wants to be described as “septic,” if for no other reason than that it makes one think of septic tanks. So, in that moment, if I had been conscious, I would have told you that I had never felt so shitty in my entire life. Why wasn’t I conscious?  It could have been for a variety of reasons. Reasons that you are able to be clued in on.  Read on, audience!

I’m not entirely clear on the timeline.  I actually lost consciousness shortly after I was admitted to the hospital.  My doctor posits I went into shock around that time.  I do remember laying in that hospital bed in that empty room, shaking violently the night before the operation; like every inch of me was freezing, yet I did not feel cold. From there, the dark part of my soul took over, my evil twin.  I became belligerent and combative and was promptly restrained.  Bea thought I became a sort of super villain, simply looking a person up and down and reducing them to a hysterical, sobbing mess with the utterance of a single, cutting, and acidic word.

If only…

If only I was that devious. If only my dark side was the real problem.  There’s a bit more to the story.

Here’s what the fragments of the medical report and my doctor have helped me piece together. Since I went septic, my body’s temperature shot up to 106 ˚F.  As Biff, my dear friend who has experience in this department, shared, I moved into a realm where Death was very real.  Unbeknownst to me, your body can’t really handle being that hot for too long.  To complicate matters, my heart does this thing where it regurgitates blood.  Blood moving from the atrium to the ventricle and then from the ventricle to the lungs splashes back.  In a non-life-threatening scenario, my heart’s special kind of acid reflux is actually nothing to worry about.  I’m not sure why it does this.  Perhaps because I was born with a heart murmur?  But that closed up years ago.

Sorry.  Back to it.  I could have waved back to Death, if I wasn’t busy hallucinating from the fever and the bacteria that might have penetrated the blood brain barrier, making nurses cry whilst speaking in tongues, trying my hand at bondage, and tripping on the opiates the doctors had given me for the pain.  I never do things easily, and as you can see, I wasn’t going to go quietly.

“Take a number, Death,” I’m sure I said at some point, past whatever images were casting themselves on my eyeballs.  “Uh-huh. I get it, you have ‘dark” and ‘mysterious’ locked down…all cool in that shredded hooded cloak thingy.  Is that Hot Topic?  There’s no way those tatters weren’t deliberate.  Yeah—I see it.  Lord knows we can’t forget about that scythe you’re brandishing.  What are you compensating for?

“Tell you what, why don’t you pop on over to the terminal ward for a beat or two.  I’m not going anywhere.  I am literally tied up at the moment.”

When I came to, I was rather unhappy…is how I would describe it if I were a less cynical person.  In truth, I felt murky and fuzzy and cheated. I came back from a war that I almost lost, and, it seemed no one, including me, knew how close I had come to losing my footing from the edge of that proverbial cliff we all affectionately know as human existence.  

I wish I could tell you that I came back from this stronger and wiser.  I wish that I could tell you I came back with super powers or a spoiler regarding if and what is on the other side.  (Never gonna let that grudge go, by the way.  Something?  Anything for my troubles?  Mind Reading? The gift of foresight?  No?)  If anything, I think I came back more broken or turned around.  My mind, and maybe even my spirit, were mangled and badly banged up.  We won’t even get into what shape my physical state was.  I was fucked up, y’all.  Until I finally requested the medical report, I lived with this gap in my life, specifically August 31, 2016, the day I lay in a hospital bed nonresponsive and questionably all there, for about ten months.  

While some questions have had some light shed on them, others still whisper from the corners of the dark recesses of my mind.  

“What if…” one voice trails off.

“Why didn’t you die?” another wonders.

“Does this mean you’re meant to do something big?” a third queries.

“Is that cheesy?” the first voice questions the third.  “I mean, can we believe fate is actually a thing.  I know we used to…”

I’m still on the fence about fate.  I want to believe in that sort of magic and serendipity.  I’m truly trying.  I’ve decided to look for a silver lining.  (You all should be proud.  I don’t usually buy into this positivity stuff.)  Whether or not I ever left or came back, I am still here.  I was engulfed in a heat that could have evaporated the very soul from my meat shell, yet most, if not all of me, held firm.  Let’s say I was reborn that August 31st. Let’s say that was the day I became a Phoenix.

And just like a newborn, mythological creature or baby of the regular variety, I came back disoriented and confused.  I had to reorient myself in what the hell life is.  Should I continue to live it in the same way I always have?  Should I make some edits?  This potentially dying thing seems like a really big note to me.  I have, for these past few months, been collecting myself, spinning my wheels, clearing away my confusion, getting really angry at times, and, again, establishing who I am in this, often annoying, yet sometimes pretty okay existence.

Maybe I am still here because Life wants to show me something amazing.  Maybe I’m meant to do something awesome with this person you all know as Neurdotically.  (Ahem—publish a novel.  Cough. Cough.  Hack.  Wheeze. Excuse me.)  Maybe I’m here because I still have a role to play in the lives of others.  Perhaps it’s someone close to me.  Perhaps it’s someone who has yet to cross my path.  Maybe I still have a lesson or twenty to learn.

I don’t know.  All of this conjecture could just boil down to a simple, you were saved in time and that is that.  Nothing special.  Nothing to see here.  Just go exist somewhere in a corner…

I do intend to move forward and find out, or maybe I’ll just say, “Fuck it,” and live my life on my terms.

I want to write a book entitled “Shut the Fuck Up!- Memoir of an Introvert.”

I solemnly swear that I am up to a sarcastic narrative…

Once upon a time, I took a trip back home to Illinois to see family and friends; to regroup, as it were, and attempt to assemble a semblance of a life path.

As most stories go, plans did not go accordingly…in a very, very big sort of way.  On Monday, August 29, 2016, at about 10:30 pm, I went to bed with a bit of a stomach ache.  Later in the twilight hours, I awoke with a fever.  While I did not see it, I could feel droplets of perspiration dapple the skin on my arms and brow.  “Don’t worry,” I consoled myself, “this is what you get for eating a Pop Tart before bed.” Then, in the waking hours of Tuesday my body awoke me from a deep sleep.  I was shaking violently, clinging a comforter.  I was cold, but did not feel actually feel icy.  I could not help but count all the muscles as they twisted and tightened, giving no sign of relinquishing.

Come the morning, I was…not better.  The stomach ache that seemed to have been the tipping domino for this whole experience was still making itself known.  It made my appetite evaporate.  I only consumed an apple, nibbling at it like an acquaintance instead of devouring it like a lover.  It troubled me because I’m the sort who is hungry all the time, and excitedly plan when I’m going to consume next.  After almost twenty-four hours of pain, which only seemed to be gaining strength, I asked my mom to take me to the Emergency Room.

The Emergency Room is a strange place for a sick person.  You are yo-yoed back and forth from the front to the back, while having some other patient who looks like an emaciated owl glare at you with his brooding owl eyes.  He may have sensed weakness, and wanted to hunt me.  The waiting area is also very cold.  While I know this was because it’s August, my delusions told me it was kept this way so that if someone keeled over, no one else would be bothered by the ensuing smell….

On the first call back, they interrogate you.  

“Do you smoke?”  

No.

“Do you drink?”

Socially, because I want to look cool in front of my friends.  Can I get bumped up the list for a hospital bed for honesty?  

“Are you sexually active?”

Nope.  Either I’m much too picky, or…no one will have me! (Dramatically throws arm over face and sobs openly.)

The second round calls for blood.  The nurse was as pleasant as possible, most likely since she was one of those people who enjoys shoving foreign objects into people in order to draw out their life force!  (Side note: I’m a self-proclaimed needle-phobe.  No aspirations of becoming a heroin addict for me.  I continue to get my highs off of pizza…and ice cream…and sarcasm…because that’s healthy—er.)

The nurse, we’ll call her Becky for no creative reasons whatsoever, was kind, as she gently took my right arm into her hands.  She commented on how it seemed it would be difficult to locate a vein.  “Are you a bit dehydrated?” she asked.  I made a mental note to kick past me’s ass when I saw him again, while I held my mom’s hand in anticipation for the ream of steel that was going to be lodged in my arm in a matter of seconds.  (Let’s just get it out of the way now.  I am not a brave nor a good patient.)  I felt the slight pinch and slow burn of the needle as it broke through the skin.  I felt a shot of pain…and then the vein blew.  “I’m sorry,” Becky said, “I swear that never happens.”  

Only in this case, I was not so keen that she try again, but she did.  She tried the left, and was successful…sort of.  Later, when I was given an IV, which was to go in my left arm, the administering nurse commented how she was unable to…since the vein was blown. (You just made the list, Becky.)

No cookie, no juice, and slightly deficient of iron, we were once again shoved back into the meat locker turned waiting room.  (I swear to God, Owl Boy, make eye-contact one more time, and I will make it so your head can spin 180 degrees!)  

Finally, after almost succumbing to hypothermia, we were called to the back of the hospital. Insurance information provided, IV administered (hold my hand, mom), urine sample given, CAT scan completed, and doctor diagnosed, I was rolled into a different hospital room.  In spite of the radiating abdominal pain, I felt at ease. It would be a simple laparoscopic surgery.  I would be out and back on my feet in a couple of days.  Fate, being a fickle bitch, must have been bored and had other plans in mind.

As I tried to get comfortable in my bed that night, I began to shiver.  Mere minutes later, the shivering turned into full on shaking.  I hit the nurse call button and waited to request a warm blanket.  I found, as a patient, that time has no hold within a hospital.  I cannot tell you if I waited five or fifteen minutes, but was thankful when the nurse replied through the PA on my bed control, albeit in an annoyed tone.  The best way to describe this nurse is that I am pretty sure she could have told everyone where Baby Jane had been spirited away to.  Three to twelve minutes slowly trudged by, until she came with one, thin blanket, draped it over my convulsing body, and walked out.

At some point, I passed out.

I woke up on Thursday, September 1st.

People like to use expressions like “Mind Blown” to describe moments in their lives when they are in sheer awe of when happened in their lives.  Upon my dad and mom telling me that it was not in fact Wednesday, but Thursday, I did not experience a blown mind, per se…more along the lines of: Mind. Fucked.

I awoke with the expected pain of where my appendix used to be.  (It had ended up swelling to three or four times its natural size.  The doctors told me it had turned green, and had only the desire to “Smash!”  I was later informed Nicky Fury carted him off for some special initiative he was cooking up.)  But that’s not all!  I also had lines for fluids, antibiotics, and painkillers in both arms, a catheter, and an NG tube, which is fed down the nostril into the stomach to drain the stomach’s bile.  Neither of the latter two were fun to have removed.  “You’re okay,” the ICU nurse said to me as he removed the tubes.  I begged to digress in that very moment, as one does not usually have tubes coming out of either of those orifices. He just tousled my hair, and told me I was strong.  (I don’t think he realized I was 33 years old, despite me needing to tell every doctor and nurse that walked through the door.  Don’t get me wrong, though, as far as ICU nurses go, I lucked out.)

How did I get here? How did I lose an entire day?  

It’s only speculation, but that night before my surgery, I may have been given too many pain killers, or not enough time was allotted between doses.  This is according to my brother Ron’s friend, who studied pharmaceutical science.  (This is why math is important people.  It literally can keep you alive.)  Anywho, I ended up becoming belligerent and combative…to the point of being restrained; something, that those who know me, probably would have payed to see.  (So, eating all that pizza to bury all my feelings was for naught.)

Losing the day ended up being a pretty serious event.  My parents had received a call at 5 am on Wednesday to be told I was nonresponsive. A CAT scan was performed to make sure no brain damage occurred.  (Allegedly, none was found…but it’s still a hot mess up in there.  I don’t care what anyone says.)  What a waste.  I mean, I didn’t even wake up with heightened senses (unless you count the nausea, or supernatural abilities.  If I’m going to be put into a drug induced coma, I’d appreciate something out of it.)

On my side of the blackout, I can’t recollect much.  Dreams were weirder, I suppose.  Everything seemed to have a pattern on it.  At one point, I do remember someone grabbing my left arm and shaking me, calling my name.  I attempted to respond, but only managed to mumble incoherently.  I later learned someone really had reached out to me: my mom.

Looking around the room made me nauseous.  Closing my eyes was no better.  What I had hoped to just be darkness, slowly became colorful and shifting patterns behind my eyelids.  As a compromise, I chose to stare at the black screen of the television, refusing to turn it on.

Of course that was just one thing that set my stomach off kilter.  The litany of doctors that circulated through my room was maddening. An infectious diseases doctor stopped by.  Her mouth a flat line, paired with half-lidded eyes.  “You had a blood infection.  It’s gone now,” she said without any sort of emotion.  When I asked her how she thought that might have happened, she seemed put upon.  She basically gave me an “I don’t know answer” and left.  (I think I have a better grasp as to why my grandmother would give some of her caregivers the bird.)  

On Friday, after I had been moved to a regular hospital floor, the cardiac doctor came into the room beaming.  “We just have to remain positive,” he said with an overreaching smile.  Immediately after, he proceeded to share stories about how his assistant had contracted a virus, and had died within the following 36 hours.  “There was nothing we could do,” he told us still smiling.  He followed this up with stories of twenty year old mothers who died from blood clots after giving birth.  Yes…we need to remain positive.  I had the sheets pulled up to my face, about ready to request this Boogeyman in a white coat leave the room.  Where was one’s Patronus when one needed it?

Did I mention that there was a Harry Potter marathon on TV?  I believe that was how I managed to keep my sanity when I was by myself. (This isn’t the blog post for it, but, while sitting in that hospital bed, I did attempt to take stock of my life. One of the lighter points I made was to come back to writing.  Inspiration and motivation had left me a ways back.  I lost faith that I could turn this blog or any of my stories into something to be consumed by the public.  I guess, the outcome really doesn’t matter.  Whether a story reaches a level of notoriety like that of Harry Potter, or is simply enjoyed by your nearest and dearest, it’s worth it.  Not to mention that it feeds that cherished part of your soul, that part that just feels like magic, so it must be vital.)

Alas, dear readers, the food could have used a pinch of magic and a sprig of whimsy.  What is said about hospital food is all true.  Truly a Dementor for your taste buds.  It really is a wonder that any patient can fathom any sort of appetite.  Please, let me take you through this Forbidden Forest of Flavors.  When I was on a clear liquid diet, I had a delicious Lemon Italian Ice…that was so fresh, so potent that it could have kept the grout on my shower sparkling white.  My turkey sandwich used deli meat from purgatory; not quite delectable turkey, and not quite turkey jerky either.  The piece de resistance was the Mediterranean Chicken Dish.  It was comprised of chicken that had clearly been cooked last week, bathed in a coating of balsamic vinegar that was then left to steam for hours on end.  Basically, it was chicken in a balsamic flavored, latex body glove that made your taste buds want to scream, “Spank ME!”  Only it didn’t provide you the safety word for when it should start tasting good.  (Fun fact: If you order cereal, you also need to request milk.  It is not assumed.)

After Harry Potter and Half Blood Prince, I was released. The nurse apologetically, and slowly, peeled the medical tape on my arms and freed me from the IV.  (PLEASE!  Just rip them off!  It would be kinder!!!!)  But before I was Leviosa-ed into a wheelchair, and Expelliarmus-ed from the grounds, I needed to take a shower.  That was when I was met with a horrifying image…

My body was wrecked. Not only was the belly distended, with rightful cause, but I had bloated everywhere else.  I jiggled when I walked, guys.  (Sniff.)  Everything. Jiggled.  I had cankles!   Plus, you’d think with all the drugs and anti-biotics that coursed through my system, making me feel more like a processed chicken than man, that I wouldn’t get a pimple!  You’d be wrong.  Couple this with my excessive oily skin, and I had regressed to my former fat kid days in high school.  If that’s not imagery enough, you know that episode of Parks and Recreation where Andy sends April a picture of him wearing a bandana because he was out of clean underwear?  You let that image stew for a minute.  If you can’t recall, Google it, or re-watch the show, it’s priceless.

And there you have it. I am slowly but surely draining back to my original size.  I still hold out hope for that owl and its letter inviting me to a magical school, assuming they accept late enrollment…

“My Amazon account was hacked!!!!!  Call when you have time,” the text message read.

“Seriously?” I wondered as I shoved more egg into my mouth, which had only been cooked on the left side of the pan, per the preference of my stove top.  

Well, of course it was serious.  Mom had used five exclamation points.  One does not use that much punctuation and cry wolf.  That’s just not done.

I called my mom immediately...after I finished breakfast, brushed my teeth, got dressed, and checked my Amazon and credit card accounts, but, you know, right after that...

The yarn mom spun started with her getting an unexpected package earlier that week.  The box seemed deceptively happy.  Upon opening it she was surprised to find...not a human finger with a cryptic message telling her she needed to stop digging...um...I may have been watching too much Bones as of late...I love that Brennan and Booth relationship.  All the feels...All...The...FEELS!!!!!  I’ve wandered off somewhere I did not intend to go...sorry.

My mom got a really expensive camera lens.  The receipt said it was valued upward of $2,000.  Kid gloves were immediately donned, and aforementioned lens was carefully replaced into the grinning box.  Customer service was then called.

“Oh, you’d be surprised how often this actually happens,” the customer service rep said to my mom.  My brow furrowed as I listened to my mom recount his words in a rather laid back tone.  (How often does this actually happen!?)

Let’s ponder this, dear readers.  Someone hacked into my mom’s Amazon account, purchased a camera lens worth two grand...and sent it to my parents’ residence.  Does anyone see a potential flaw in this plan?  Unless, the hack came from inside the house.  

OH MY GOD!!!!! (Note the five exclamation points...)

I mean...well...bear with me here.  I’ve seen a couple episodes of Disney’s Dog with a Blog, okay.  You know what I’m taking about.  A dog is performing a really sloppy anthropological study on the family he lives with...he talks...hijinks ensue, but are resolved in under 30 minutes...documents all that shit in a blog...hence the title of the show.

Now, I’m just throwing it out there, but our dog does enjoy spying on the neighbors...and that lens would probably help with the zooming in on things.

Yes...hence all the belly rubs.  They serve as the perfect distraction...