10/7/2011 6:56 AM
The nurse just handed over her shift to another nurse and said the following statement, “he’s getting out today.” Though not technically listed on my charge orders, this is the closest to confirmation I have received since my stay in the plastic prison. I am pretty obviously elated with this news but still incredibly concerned for a number of reasons.
1) I still can’t see. This means for the time being I am unable to legally drive and somehow my desire to see 3D movies will be even lower. Imagine opening one eye and staring at the sun for thirty minutes and then trying to look at something else. That’s what my right eye is like twenty four hours a day. My eye sight has not improved since I have been here so I am skeptical it is ever going to get better again.
2) I still can’t move my left leg or arm so good. Tingly, slightly numb, various neurological adverbs. I can’t feel my damn hand or foot—that’s what this comes down to. Now, I will say that I am no longer on crutches and I can amble around on my own to say: the bathroom and back to my bed as many times as I need to in a given day (which is like a million times when you’re on an IV all the time.)
So, I’m being released, but I’m not totally fixed. I guess that’s a feeling I had not fully considered in my steadfast pleading to get out of here. I’m leaving almost as broken as I came in. I get to leave knowing this might be permanent—and certain labs are not back as of yet.
That’s rosy.
Can we get back to the elation part? The real reason I’m excited to leave? I started watching Transformers 3 just before I was admitted to the hospital and I still have like two hours of Shia yelling “NONONONONONO” to get through. There is a world that exists outside of my tiny plastic bed, and it is filled with CG-explosions and Michael Bay dutch-angled tracking shots. This world will be a good world.
I will update again when and if I successfully get out of here, but for now, I will be going home “soon,” and that is a fantastic thing.
Before I sign out this short blog entry I wanted to correct something that might have been misconstrued in my blog entry yesterday—specific to the stuff about whether or not I had a stroke—and what that means. I used to the phrase, “nobody cares” not to insinuate that the doctors aren’t doing everything in their power to figure out what is wrong with me, I used the phrase to illustrate that dwelling on the specifics was irrelevant to them as we had begun moving so fast. They care a whole hell of a lot at UT Southwestern, I just happen to be a problematic case. I am in the doctor’s debt for all of the care and compassion they have shown me in the last eight days—and as we move forward through an out-patient program (and physical therapy,) this is a compassion I will be glad to see moving forward.
I hope the next time I update this blog is from my own bed in my own home.
Dear internet stranger,
ReplyDeleteReading of your suffering is tremendously difficult. The work of your team helped bring happiness to my life during a difficult time, and there is no obvious way I can do the same for you.
Carry on being strong, get through this, and remember that you affect people you've never met.