12. A vasectomy?

I was in a medically induced coma for 11 days when I was 19 (I’m 24 now). I went to sleep drunk, and while I was sleeping on my back I accidentally threw up. My lungs were filled with so much fluid that I was likely going to die. All I know is my mother was told to say her final goodbye to me, and my grandmother had me baptized. But then at the last minute, the doctor tried flipping me onto my stomach and it started to break up the stuff in my lungs, and it began to dissipate (this is my understanding). I was in the ICU for about 2 weeks due to aspiration pneumonia, and then was on the general medicine floor for about 2-3 weeks. I don’t remember much about waking from the coma, except I had this weird inclination that I was given a vasectomy while I was under.

I remember a few things that actually happened around me while I was under, like the score to a football game that someone must have been watching on my TV, and I recognized a nurse when I woke up. I guess my main memory about waking up is I was just super confused. I didn’t know why I was in the hospital, last thing I remembered it was before Halloween and I was going to bed, and I woke up and I’d missed election day.

13. Getting Better

I was in a medically induced coma for over a week. During that time I had four surgeries and severe sepsis. A couple of organ systems started shutting down. I had horrible hallucinations/nightmares. When I woke up I didn’t know where I was, what city I was in, what day it was, and thought my parents were imposters. They would always ask me if I knew my name, the date, etc. and I was wondering how they expected me to know. I physically couldn’t move to hit the nurse call button. I could barely speak and had no sense of time. I thought I was in some ground floor building, maybe an ER, and there was an entire community on the roof. I also thought I was being held captive by some cult and that I had had a baby (my stomach was really swollen and they kept asking me if I was pregnant before procedures). They had me sitting up in a chair relatively early in the “just of the breathing tube” process and I couldn’t hold my head up, pick my feet up and down, or squeeze a foamy thing. I had no idea how to read a clock at that time and had a distorted passage of time. It felt like I had to sit in that chair forever and I never knew when it was going to end. At the time I still didn’t know where I was and why I was there. My parents kept showing me a video of my cats they had taken one day (they had been kicked out by my doctor to let me rest) and I kept wondering why they kept showing this horrible quality video! Apparently I would just look at them blankly or with puzzlement. They didn’t know if I was all there.

All told I have a three week memory blank (a week while I was sick pre-coma, coma, and coming out of the coma). I slowly gained my senses back enough to recognize my parents and where I was.

After a month in ICU was taken to the normal unit. I had to take a swallow “test” at several points to see if I could eat. This consisted of me sitting up in a chair swallowing various viscosities of liquids. I still didn’t have the strength to sit up well and basically leaned into a side board on the chair. I took the test a couple of times because I failed it at least once. I still couldn’t move and someone had to feed me the liquid diet I was cleared for (slushies, clear soup). For awhile I had a call “button” (like an easy button) up by my head because I couldn’t use a normal one. I remember watching my roommate walk to bathroom and complain how painful it was. I wanted to yell at them to suck it up, at least they could walk.

I finally gained a bit of movement back. I still couldn’t talk very well. Psychiatrists came in to evaluate tremors I had. They had me write a sentence. Let me tell you that was so hard. I wrote “hello world” and they wanted something longer. They changed some medication and eventually I was able to grab my water cup to drink.

About every day physical therapy would come, make me sit up in bed (so hard), make me stand up with a walker and some belt assistance, and rotate over into a chair. I could measure time again and had to stay sitting for an hour. I would get dizzy rather easily though. After about a week they made me start upright physical therapy exercises. Standing for a few seconds, lifting my feet up and down (marching), kicking my feet out, and various other exercises. Eventually they had me stand and try and catch a ball that they bounced toward me or bounce the ball myself.

One day the physical therapist told me it was time to try and take a step. This was about seven weeks after I had been hospitalized total and a few after the medically induced coma. I’ve done many physical activities but that was about the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Sometimes around this time I began to put my history back together…what happened, the timeline, what was going to happen. My ability to speak and my relative intelligence returned.

Because of my extended hospital stay not moving, the length of time I didn’t eat, and my illness my muscles had atrophied. I had no calf muscles. I was evaluated for “wasting” and eventually put on Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN)..aka IV feeding. I had a semi-port put into my chest that went straight to my heart in order to shuttle food in.

Eventually I was able to walk the length of the hallway. I was transferred to in-patient physical therapy. The gave me various speaking, eating, and cognitive evaluations which I fortunately passed. My sense of movement was messed up and I was constantly receiving messages from my eyes that I was moving ever so slightly (like a vibration). We worked on standing drills, focusing on different things to see if that would fix my issues. I was throwing up every other day, multiple times in a day, partially because of the motion (I later found out it was an infection but anyway…). Physical therapy worked with me on walking up stairs (that was terrifying and tough), walking a couple of hundred feet, walking over obstacles (like six inches off the floor), and getting in and out of a car. Occupational therapy worked with me on being able to stand to brush my teeth, changing my clothes, doing laundry, and manual dexterity. I was only in in-patient therapy for a week.

When I went home I had to climb one flight of stairs. My dad walked behind me as I walked one flight, having to pause several times. I did alot of sleeping while home, still on TPN (for various reasons). Standing up to brush my teeth was still tough. As was making it from my bed to my couch. Whenever we went anywhere for an extended period of time I would be in a wheelchair. I also couldn’t lay on my side in bed like I used too…I didn’t have the strength. I spent the next six months getting strength back, moving a bit more and more every day. When the event happened my doctors told me it would take two years for me to recover from the incident and they were right. It was 1.5 years before I was able to work at all, and even that was very much limited working.

Now I live somewhat normally but with some chronic medical conditions. I get tired very easily. I still find out things about my stay that I didn’t know before, even though it’s been a few years. The hallucinations/dreams have stayed with me and I have some PTSD-like symptoms from not knowing where I was, not being able to move, and not being able to communicate.

But I’m getting better, little by little.