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Journal, Diary, & Blogging / The Scar
At the end of September I went into the hospital. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know about it for approximately a week afterwards.
You see, what happened was this: my spinal fluid got attacked by a virus. It all started with a massively painful headache. Being prone to migraines, I thought it was just a magnified version of one. When I started to lose feeling in my limbs, however, my family decided going to the hospital was a good idea. So we went. I lay in a hospital bed for a few hours in emergency, waiting for the doctor to check a few things. In the end I just went home feeling a little better and told to just rest. Yay.
A few days later my head was still hurting. My friends had come over to see me, and I went downstairs to see them, even though my brain felt like it was trying to revolt. I remember talking with them for a while, and then things got really hazy.
Next thing I know I’m waking up in the hospital, tied down to the bed, with a freaking mask on my face to help me breathe! What’s worse is I have no clue how I got there and there isn’t a single familiar face around me. Where did my family go? How did I end up here? Who the hell are all these people? Oh, they’re nurses. Well, that’s alright then. Wait a minute….
The hospital staff tried to reassure me that my family would be there in the morning. I think I nodded and smiled, but for some reason I didn’t believe them. Being off of my psych medication had made me a bit on the paranoid side. Somewhere in my literally sick mind I thought I was kidnapped here for some nefarious purpose. Consequently I was really VERY happy to see my family arrive the next morning.
For the next few days I was only partially lucid. I kept drifting in and out of very realistic dreams in which the hospital staff were doing awful experiments on me that were probably both illegal and immoral. Unfortunately for my state of mind, the dreams took place in the same hospital room I was in, and often featured the actual nurses and other staff that waited on me. Or else I’d be dreaming about being home, and wake up trying to leave the hospital bed. Which was a bad thing considering I was on a machine to help me breath and had an IV shoved into my neck.
Later I learned about how I ended up in the hospital. Apparently some time after I came downstairs to talk with my friends, I stopped acting like myself. Now, keep in mind, I have no memories of this incident. I started having bad memory loss. I would forget things that I never should forget. Like who Buffy the Vampire Slayer is. When I couldn’t remember who she was, my friends all exchanged worried looks and decided it was time to leave.
This turned out to be a wise decision. Shortly after they left, I stopped using human speech altogether. Instead I resorted to more primal means of communication, such as growling and screaming at people, or just grabbing things. Apparently there was one corner of the room that scared me, because I would stare at it and freak out. Later I even started attacking my mother and husband, apparently even trying to bite off my mother’s ear at one point. Clearly no one was behind the wheel of my mind anymore. The lights were on, but nobody was home.
In the end they called the police to help subdue me. I got handcuffed to the ambulance while they were getting ready to transport me. And the poor officer who showed up…apparently I kicked him in the shins. Now, I have to point out here that generally I am not a violent woman at all. I don’t even like to kill bugs. (Except mosquitoes, who deserve it.) I was so out of it, the hospital had to keep me sedated to do anything to me. I’m just glad I was unconscious while there was a tube down my throat and during the lumbar puncture. That would have hurt.
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Tsk, no reviews? However, sometimes people are reluctant to respond to these personal experiences. How much should be critical on how a person shares this personal experience, and how much should just be an honest, human response to the distress or happiness one is portraying?
Well, there really is little to criticize. Grammar was smooth, the ‘story’ was built upon quite well with a strong introduction. And as a sister who was present during a portion of the madness, the expereince was explained better than I could – especially with the element of the one who actualyl experienced the inflictions, and the feelings that go with it.
Speaking of feelings, there could be a little more reflection, now that the danger has passed, how it strikes you when you think about it. Fear? Dread? Wonder? Relief? A new respect for life? Fascination, even? This is just the bare bones of what happened, but not how it effected the writer afterwards. Ah, but who am I to criticize? Not only have I heard this story told over and over, I’ve told it myself.
Lastly, it ended abruptly (yes, how can I criticize my sister writing about a scary experience? SHAME!) and could use something to conclude it all up, rather than just sort of falling on the reader with flat thud.
I’m glad you shared this experience, though.
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