Where I Have Been

It has been too long since I posted a blog, I am sorry for that. Usually when I sit down to write my problem is choosing which thought to share, which story to tell. Words are puppets and I am the puppet master. They do what I tell them to and dance for my pleasure. Today, I face the computer with a different problem. I don’t know what to say, not because I do not have a lot on my mind, but I can’t find the words to tell you where I have been these past few weeks. Words never fall short for me, it feels, strange. I will try to explain, but I am unsure of how to tell this story.

A few weeks ago I was consumed with what my inadequate doctor called “a winter virus”. I was sent home to rest and drink lots of fluids. Two days later my husband took me to the emergency room because I was unable to speak properly, unable to walk normally, my eyesight had become weird, I was running a high fever, vomiting etc. etc. To make a rather long and horrible story short, a spinal tap done in the E.R. tested positive for spinal meningitis and listeria. Both deadly illnesses. I was placed in isolation immediately and with an I.V. in each arm they pumped antibiotics into me non stop for almost four days.

My trip to the E.R. and the day after that are a hazy blur in my memory, in fact there are about two weeks of my life that are missing a number of accurate memories. It is a frightful thing not to remember parts of your life. As the antibiotics cleaned my septic blood and the virus that was nestled in my brain finally began to relent, a dark reality emerged. I had come face to face with my mortality for the first time in my life. This fact was made more real when one nurse told me “If you had come in 24 hours later then you did, you would have been beyond our reach”.  At the height of my sickness I vaguely recall arguing with my husband that I did not want to go to the hospital since I have no insurance. Thankfully I married a man whose stubbornness rivals my own and the bottom line is he saved my life. So how do I put into words what it is like to look into someone’s eyes and know that if he had not been there, I would not be here. My words fail, they are not big enough or strong enough.

While lying on the gurney in the E.R., I feel as though I had a business meeting with death. We sat down in the blackest of places and discussed the available options and we just could not come to terms on a deal. We agreed to readdress this venture at a later date and we parted ways. I shook hands with death. How do I put into words what it feels like to come out of that kind of darkness? How do I explain the sort of change that washed over me during an experience like this? My words fail, they are not heavy or terminal enough.

I feel sorry for the nurses that took care of me. With so few visitors in isolation I found myself babbling to anyone who walked into the room. Geri on a regular day has a lot of weird ideas and dramatic thoughts to share, but Geri on drugs and isolated is a whole new level of strange. I told at least six nurses or aids, possibly more I don’t remember, about what I was learning from this experience in detail. One sentence in particular was going round and round in my head and I tried to share it through the morphine with anyone who would listen. The words seemed important to me and worth remembering. I told them “life is made up of a bunch of tiny moments, all connected by the people who experience them together.” I even wrote these words down on a napkin that got thrown away. I tried to explain the meaning, telling people that within my somber experience I suddenly felt connected to people on the other side of the world whose names I did not know. People who were sick, who were dying, who were suffering and afraid. I felt lonely in my cold hospital room, but I did not feel alone. I felt vividly aware that I was not the first to be in this place, and that like others, I could get through it. I had never known what it felt like to be completely dependent on others to keep my body alive or the gruesomeness of watching the very drugs that were saving my life simultaneously eat away at my veins and skin. I felt a connected compassion for people who know they will die or for those suffering treatments that spare their life but not their bodies.  My little Geri world got bigger and I feel a sad and tender space has opened inside me for anyone in pain or who is scared. I will never be the same. I will feel forever linked with anyone who has ever gotten lost in that consuming darkness and wondered if they will ever find their way home. But how do you express such a profound and abstract concept without making people nervous that you have suffered permanent neurological damage (which the doctor told me I didn’t btw)? My words fail, they are not beautiful or concrete enough.

Peter Pan said that “to die would be a great adventure”. Well I don’t know if that is true, but I can honestly say that to almost die is a great adventure. I don’t mean ‘great’ as in ‘oh boy! This is so great!’ I mean it is grand, large, capacious, generous. The opportunity opened to me by this experience is huge. I have learned so much, and I am just getting started. I know I will process the emotions, fear, gratefulness and shock for a long time. I want to be a sponge. I want to soak up all there is to learn from this event. I want it to change me and mold me and make me a better person. I want to find the words that honor how I feel and what I mean. But, perhaps in my learning I will discover that some things we experience are not stories that can be told in words. Maybe I am not the puppet master after all. Maybe I am the puppet and life is the master and if I let it guide me I will learn that when words are not enough, I am.

Thank you for reading. I hope to return to my usual blogging habits now that the crisis is over. I have missed connecting with all of you and I am anxious to hear how you are doing. With love, G.R.