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Explanation, and back to my story

First I must address my message of late last week and without getting to far into it I will simply say that a given situation really got under my skin. Throughout out my series I have always attempted to maintain control and remain calm no matter the circumstances. I have not always succeeded in doing that but do know that when I write to you all that it is most definitely controlled and it involves thought. For the most part I don’t make snap decisions and I didn’t on Friday, but for some reason I decided that I wanted to express myself. For those of you who didn’t understand my views, that’s fine as I don’t expect you to as you aren’t in my situation. As I’ve said before, sometimes I’ll make sense and sometimes I won’t.

Now back to my story.

I think I left off with my Stick story, which took place after my Sunday crisis. We are now in early August and as I remember my condition pretty much fluctuated for the next couple of weeks. Some where over the next while the Doctors would attempt to wake me from my coma, but for reasons I am unsure of that was unsuccessful. I would eventually be diagnosed with Sepsis, which as I understand it is a severe state of infection and my body went into what is called ’septic shock’ as a result. I was also diagnosed with ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome), thus upon waking my lungs and lung functions were the focal point of my care. The details of the final three weeks of my coma, as opposed to the first 3-4 days, are pretty much a blur to me. I have heard stories and events from that time but they are mostly unclear to me so I will jump to my waking and may return to that time should the events become clear to me.

I woke on August 23rd, two days after my Mom’s birthday and 5 days before my Dad’s, I would ultimately miss both their birthday celebrations, but I’m sure my waking was celebration enough. The first thing I remember upon waking was seeing my Dad’s face, I didn’t know where I was or what had happened to me so I pretty much began filling in the blanks myself. And ‘my’ version of the story was a little different than the actual story. I remember my Dad saying to me “squeeze my hand if you want me to explain where you are and what happened to you”. Well to make a long story short I didn’t squeeze his hand because I thought my situation involved a big surprise for me and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise. I went from there to slowly understanding and realizing that I was missing about a month from memory as the last thing I knew it was July 25th. My first few days awake were spent trying to communicate with my family, with very little success. It was potentially one of the most frustrating times of my life as for the first day I still had the tube in my mouth.

Now that I was awake the major challenge ahead was to get me off life-support and that was most definitely going to involve a tracheotomy, which I thought would render me speechless for life. I don’t know where I got this idea as the Doctors explained the procedure to me, but since I couldn’t ask any questions I could get no answers. I had agreed to this procedure in late July before being placed on life-support, but had no and still have no recollection of the conversation. So after what seemed like an all day conversation I remember the topic some how got moved to the small possibility of me not having to have a trach. I very distinctly recall my Mom saying to a Resident “you have to tell him exactly what he needs to do, he has to understand what he needs to do”. From that comment came my first challenge since waking, a monitor that was just behind my bed was turned so I could see it over my left shoulder. It was explained to me that I needed to keep this particular level above a specific number, which I think was 800 or 900 or maybe 80-90%. I think this monitor displayed my oxygen levels, which at this point were being partially controlled by life-support. By partially I mean I was free to breathe on my own but if I were to miss a breath the machine would breathe for me. The next 12 hours were spent starring at that screen, I hardly took my eyes off it attempting to get through the night without the help from my breathing friend. I’m sure I don’t remember the whole night, but I do remember the sound of that GD alarm as it would snap my concentration back to the task at hand. The next morning came relatively quick as I really had no concept of time. My Dad was in to see me early as usual and he saw my Dr., Dr. O’Brien and assumed we were on our way to the operating room. After her examination she determined that the trach was not necessary and within a few hours I was extibated (tube removed) and I was placed on a normal oxygen mask. A major step that I really had no grasp of at the time, like most of the events of that week.

I lost my tube on Tuesday, August 24th, and was still unable to speak and the Docs were unsure of when my voice would come back. So I spent another frustrating day attempting to communicate with my family. I remember being able to mouth the words and I couldn’t understand why no one could read my lips. I have since been told that I was hardly moving my mouth as at this point I still had very little motor control. As a result of that I was unable to write, holding a pen or marker was not an option. I did eventually, with the help of a large printed alphabet, spell out my first message which read… I want to go home. This was greeted with several, we know you do sweetheart, which was comforting but not exactly what I wanted to hear. The next message I attempted to send, but never did get out was… I want a Rootbeer, that is the truth. I guess after a month of no food or drink I felt I needed to get back to some of my favourite things.

That brings me to my first taste of food/drink and this is where I’ll finish. It was later that night and Jenny was staying with me for the night. Of course during my sleep I received all my medications IV, well now that I was awake and without tube my Nurse for the evening decided that I should take my immunosuppressant (Cyclosporine) by pill. I am only supposed to take these pills with chocolate milk but that didn’t seem to phase the Nurse, and I’m not sure she even understood. On top of that I’m not sure I was aware of what I was taking or what I was taking them with, which turned out to be hospital orange juice, if you can call it juice. The first thing I had pass down my throat in a month was hospital orange juice and let me tell you it burned like a forest fire. It burned so bad that I blurted out “that tastes awful”, and those were my first words. I guess if there was ever a time when I could accept incompetence it was at that time. Well once the first words were out it was off to the races after that as Jenny has told me several times that I didn’t shut up for the rest of the night. My new voice, was a little slower than before and I have likened it to Forrest Gump. I was described as simple during those first few days awake, and I will tell you the simplest things gave me such great pleasure.

Well that brings us to Wednesday and I’ll continue there next time, which may be right after I send this message, either way it won’t be long.

Stay tuned,

Geoff
#4

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