What was IT like?

I was waking up. But this is where this starts to get difficult for me. From now on, I'm not recounting from what others have told me, but from my own fragmented memory. I can't remember much of early to mid September. In fact much of what happened until my surgery is foggy and a blur. Here is what I do remember (more remembering, ugh). I remember my mother being there and telling me what had happened, because of course I was pretty confused. I remember being convinced at first that I was in Japan and in a place called Tokyo Metropolitan Hospital. 

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This entry is difficult for me because my memory is so fuzzy and disorganized. I want to tell want happened but, honestly I can't seem to organize it in my mind. I know that I could just lay down some explosion of random bits, but my sense of getting it right won't let me.  I'll keep trying.  In the meantime, one question I get a lot is "What was it like?”  This seems like a strange question to me, first, because, if the roles were reversed, and someone I knew had gone though a traumatic experience I don't think I could ever conceive of understand "what it was like".  But I get this a lot, so I will try. Besides, it may be somewhat cathartic for me.  

 

Imagine, now.   The last memory you have is being wheeled into a hospital in excruciating pain.  This is followed by the worst nightmares of your life that never seem to end.  When you finally do wake up,  your body is broken, you have no strength at all, you can't even sit up let alone stand or walk.  Hell, you can't even raise your head.  There is a tube down your throat so you can't talk.  There 3 or four tubes coming out of your stomach and chest.  You are in what appears to be a windowless room and thus you can't tell the difference between day and night.   You think it's probably about Aug 2nd or 3rd, but in fact it's approximately Sept 12th or so.  Almost 6 weeks of your life has just disappeared, in fact, pretty much your life has disappeared. And your mother, who is supposed to be 1500 miles away, is there and telling you that you need a heart transplant.  Now ask me what it was like.  Or maybe it was more like this. 

 

But I was lucky, blessed, even.  I was alive, which by all rights, I shouldn't be. I was surrounded by people who loved me (Wendy, and my father and mother), and surrounded by sentiments from people who loved me - the wall of my hospital room was covered in cards.  And it turns out, that I was in one of the best transplant programs in the world but that seemed pretty far off.