Pagey
Bluelight Crew
They say that if you almost die, you come out of it with some kind of newfound respect for life.
I say that’s complete fucking bullshit.
I almost died. In fact, technically, I died a few times until I was defibrillated enough to come back to this world. That was about a month ago. You know what I got from it? A newfound disgust in how eager life is to snatch itself away from you at the first little opportunity it gets, how eager it is to dangle its power in front of your eyes, right out of your reach and where you can just see it, see it as your vision fades to grey and then back again, as your peripherals disappear and everything around you goes numb and suddenly you can’t hear or see anything except the monitor beeping and going red and saying you’re having another seizure.
A different kind of seizure this one, not the other ones you were having all night, before the EMTs came to the apartment, proper grand-mal seizures, banging your head and your pelvis and your elbows and every little bone in your body against the floor, against the walls, all the time perfectly aware of what was going on, of what your body was doing, of the electric shocks sending spasms of terror through you and yet completely immobilised by those shocks and unable to stop it, until you come out of it with a molar knocked out of your jaw because you hit your head against the wall that damn hard.
But you only have a few seconds to reflect on what just happened, to understand what’s going on when it starts up again, your head starts hitting the ground, that’s how it always began, my head would start banging the floor uncontrollably and then I’d feel my limbs lose control and then all of a sudden I was convulsing everywhere and knocking things over and all I knew was how much my skull hurt and that I wanted a blanket under it, and the only external thing I was aware of was my fiancé saying ‘Oh God, oh God’ over and over again but not calling an ambulance because by that point both our temperatures were nearing 42°C and we were too delirious to understand how to function.
And eventually the EMTs managed to come, somehow, I don’t know who exactly called them in the end and told them where to find us but I remember my fiancé holding the phone next to me while yelling into it ‘Can’t you hear her, the banging, that’s her having a seizure, can you please come oh God’ and then I asked the EMTs if we were going to be okay and one of them said, ‘I don’t know’.
In my head they found us in the corridor, we were completely naked by that time because we were so hot and feverish and didn’t know what was happening, the two male EMTs found me completely naked convulsing in the corridor but apparently, according to my fiancé, they actually found us in the apartment and I imagined the whole thing because of the fever. I don’t seem to have a real memory between the first seizures and the ICU. I don’t remember the trip to the hospital or being put into an ambulance, but then again my fiancé said I was seizing the whole time, non-stop, just over, and over, and over again.
So the next memory is lying on a hospital bed and a doctor next to me saying ‘I think we’re going to have to intubate’, and me for some reason thinking that simply meant sticking an IV into me when obviously I’d had one in me from the second I arrived, and then I don’t really remember anything because that’s when those other kinds of seizures started and everything around me went numb and confused and distant and all I heard was a faint voice in the background saying ‘We gotta intubate now’ and then I don’t remember anything except waking up a few hours later and alternating between those seizures and panic attacks about having ended my life and ruined everything and everyone finding out and my fiancé being dead. They told me he was fine and he was doing better than me and he was already in the ward, apparently I spent about five hours longer in the ICU because I kept needing defibrillation.
The rest I don’t feel ready to write down yet. According to my shrink I need to write down every little minute detail of what happened, from start to finish, to help with the PTSD, you know. This isn’t what that is at all, because I left out the worst of it and the stuff that makes me want to die as I write this in my uni common room with people chatting about their bus ride to class next to me. I don’t know how I’ll write down every little detail, the details that make me break down when I see an ambulance or that make me lock myself in my room when I get home every day because people scare me or the details that mean I’ve not really eaten since it happened because I want to get smaller and disappear.
One day I guess, maybe, I’ll be able to write that down. But this is the beginning of the story of how my fiancé and I almost died.
I say that’s complete fucking bullshit.
I almost died. In fact, technically, I died a few times until I was defibrillated enough to come back to this world. That was about a month ago. You know what I got from it? A newfound disgust in how eager life is to snatch itself away from you at the first little opportunity it gets, how eager it is to dangle its power in front of your eyes, right out of your reach and where you can just see it, see it as your vision fades to grey and then back again, as your peripherals disappear and everything around you goes numb and suddenly you can’t hear or see anything except the monitor beeping and going red and saying you’re having another seizure.
A different kind of seizure this one, not the other ones you were having all night, before the EMTs came to the apartment, proper grand-mal seizures, banging your head and your pelvis and your elbows and every little bone in your body against the floor, against the walls, all the time perfectly aware of what was going on, of what your body was doing, of the electric shocks sending spasms of terror through you and yet completely immobilised by those shocks and unable to stop it, until you come out of it with a molar knocked out of your jaw because you hit your head against the wall that damn hard.
But you only have a few seconds to reflect on what just happened, to understand what’s going on when it starts up again, your head starts hitting the ground, that’s how it always began, my head would start banging the floor uncontrollably and then I’d feel my limbs lose control and then all of a sudden I was convulsing everywhere and knocking things over and all I knew was how much my skull hurt and that I wanted a blanket under it, and the only external thing I was aware of was my fiancé saying ‘Oh God, oh God’ over and over again but not calling an ambulance because by that point both our temperatures were nearing 42°C and we were too delirious to understand how to function.
And eventually the EMTs managed to come, somehow, I don’t know who exactly called them in the end and told them where to find us but I remember my fiancé holding the phone next to me while yelling into it ‘Can’t you hear her, the banging, that’s her having a seizure, can you please come oh God’ and then I asked the EMTs if we were going to be okay and one of them said, ‘I don’t know’.
In my head they found us in the corridor, we were completely naked by that time because we were so hot and feverish and didn’t know what was happening, the two male EMTs found me completely naked convulsing in the corridor but apparently, according to my fiancé, they actually found us in the apartment and I imagined the whole thing because of the fever. I don’t seem to have a real memory between the first seizures and the ICU. I don’t remember the trip to the hospital or being put into an ambulance, but then again my fiancé said I was seizing the whole time, non-stop, just over, and over, and over again.
So the next memory is lying on a hospital bed and a doctor next to me saying ‘I think we’re going to have to intubate’, and me for some reason thinking that simply meant sticking an IV into me when obviously I’d had one in me from the second I arrived, and then I don’t really remember anything because that’s when those other kinds of seizures started and everything around me went numb and confused and distant and all I heard was a faint voice in the background saying ‘We gotta intubate now’ and then I don’t remember anything except waking up a few hours later and alternating between those seizures and panic attacks about having ended my life and ruined everything and everyone finding out and my fiancé being dead. They told me he was fine and he was doing better than me and he was already in the ward, apparently I spent about five hours longer in the ICU because I kept needing defibrillation.
The rest I don’t feel ready to write down yet. According to my shrink I need to write down every little minute detail of what happened, from start to finish, to help with the PTSD, you know. This isn’t what that is at all, because I left out the worst of it and the stuff that makes me want to die as I write this in my uni common room with people chatting about their bus ride to class next to me. I don’t know how I’ll write down every little detail, the details that make me break down when I see an ambulance or that make me lock myself in my room when I get home every day because people scare me or the details that mean I’ve not really eaten since it happened because I want to get smaller and disappear.
One day I guess, maybe, I’ll be able to write that down. But this is the beginning of the story of how my fiancé and I almost died.
. Anyways, good luck in your recovery 
