There are things about the accident
that I could not have known until I was told later… For example, when I flipped
I came to rest against a tree. I also didn't know how badly I had cut my scalp.
So many things the mind/brain protects us against, pain, tumbling, sounds,
smells, blood, fear in general… It comes back in bits and fragments and in the
time it takes to process what we know, we have to choose sadness or courage in
our journey forward.
After my
bold statement to my sister which I thoroughly meant, the next few days were a
mixture of total clarity and drug-induced fog or dare I say sleep. One does not
sleep in the trauma unit. One is kept alive therefore monitored with vigilance.
I'm at a point right now where I realize I have not slept normally since that
day.…… That clarity I speak of had me fully aware of the sensation of being
intubated, that tube down my throat into my lungs, not pleasant. My lungs were
full of fluids and when I tried to pull air in and push it out, I was as often
choking on mucus of sorts. To add to that I was also biting the tube in a
clench response to the stress of trying to breathe. There was also the feeding
tube that went up my nose which would prove to cause problems in my sinuses
later on. But I was constantly being told to stop biting because it was
inhibiting my breathing, easier said than done. The huge neck brace I was
wearing was not exactly helping matters either. All of this culminated to form
one particularly bad moment…
I had no way to call on a nurse if I needed one. Everything was up to
the monitors in my room that showed heart rate and oxygen saturation levels in
my blood. Otherwise unless someone walked by my room and I caught their eye, I
was at the mercy of those alerts. So when one day I became so overwhelmed with
fluid in my mouth and could not breathe and the panic set in as I waited for
someone to walk by… No alarms went off, no breath came in so I began to flail
and move as much as I could which meant mostly my head and neck, until someone
finally noticed my distress… A nurse came in and immediately suctioned the
fluids out and warned me against moving my head so much. Disaster averted but
the next phase was being told by one very kind and protective respiratory
therapist that if I could not breathe through intubation I would have to be put
on a respirator and that would mean I might be able to get back off easily or
ever. A ventilator would be breathing for me and it was a scary idea
in everyone's mind that I could not do that myself. For me, all I wanted to do
was breathe, no matter the consequences down the road…
