In my previous post on this website I said I'd probably never post here again, but as the heart and mind are wont to do they changed. I'm here because I have things I want to say though to no one in particular. You ever just need to say things? I do. My moment of truth is really more like moments. So many. The past 2 years has been one hell of a journey. Actually I should say the past 3 and a half. In the end of 2011 the start of 2012 my life was in chaos. I made some decisions that led to a hell of a soul-searching and I made a lot of changes in my life. I walked away from what I think are the worst parts of myself. In between then and now...I don't know. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this other than I need to get all this out. When I moved to Ohio everything in my life changed. I had to break everything I was apart and become a new version of myself. I wasn't happy before and when I made this decision to change it all it was because I could no longer accept the worst version I ever was. When you realize that all you've been is what you see as a terrible person....3 and a half years ago....I was a very scared, very lonely, very sad child inside. I never wanted anyone to get close enough to see her and all I could ever do was lash out. I hurt a lot of people. I hurt myself. And while I can, and have, apologized profusely I don't ask forgiveness. It's taken me all this time to finally come full circle I think. I thought I had before, but life keeps changing. It disassembles, reassembles, rearranges. When I moved where I am now it took a year of therapy for me to feel like I was at least making a difference. Within a year and a half life broke me again. My grandmother died and I was in pieces once again. But as it tends to go you take the good with the bad and not long after I got married. I can honestly say that part of the past 2 years has been the best. My wife she makes me into possibly the best person I could ever be. She makes me want to be that for her. Even through the bad, through the terrifying, through the chaotic. I am constantly in awe at the way things have turned out. Of course I might not be making sense and the subject seems to be jumping around but I never said I'd get it right haha.
My point is life has broken me down a lot the past few years. Most of it I brought on myself. But you only find your true self when you hit the bottom of the barrel. The past few years since coming here, losing my grandmother, getting married...none of it really sunk in the way I thought it did until about 3 months ago. May 25, 2015 I nearly died at Mercy Hospital in the ER here in Ohio. A freak happenstance. I wasn't doing anything dangerous, hell I was actually safer than I've ever been until it all happened. I got bit by a mosquito at work. That mosquito just happened to carry the West Nile Virus. Did you know there are 3 forms of the West Nile Virus? Neither did I. But since I never do anything half-assed (I'm a full-assed sort of person) I didn't just get it. I got the worst form. Technically my specialist called it West Nile Meningitis. Started with a headache. That simple just a headache. Some nausea came days later. It took 5 days to get bad enough for my wife to force me to the hospital. Funny enough my blood tests came back clear. They gave me some migraine medication and sent me home. The medication worked for the headache for all of 2 days before I landed back in the hospital for an even worse headache. The doctor didn't even have me for an hour before he decided I had acute vascular migraines. He told me to keep taking the medication. Within 24 hours of that diagnosis I was rendered unconscious. Encephalitis had set in. All of the issues I was having, the West Nile, the Meningitis, the Encephalitis separately were easily treatable, or so I would assume. But together....not so much. The afternoon after the doctor diagnosed me with migraines I went into the hospital about 3 o'clock. I was barely coherent. The rest of this isn't a first hand account, but rather told to me from my brother. It took them 3 hours to get me into a hospital room, and by that time I was fully unconscious. They gave me morphine because even unconscious I was groaning with the pain. The doctors, Dr. Kobe and Dr. Steve, told my brother they weren't sure what was wrong with me. They had already taken blood once and found nothing. After that it was apparently a barrage of nurses and doctors and testing, until they finally discovered part of the issue. Meningitis. Which alone can kill you if not treated right, and it had already been left to chance for a week, and as I had Encephalitis that was the infection attacking my brain. They told my brother they couldn't be sure of the extent of the damage until I woke up, but they couldn't even be sure I would wake again once the pressure on my brain was gone. They tried a spinal tap to remove some of the infected fluid. They pulled 2 vials out of my back right there in the hospital room and it didn't work. I didn't wake up. It didn't take enough pressure off of my brain. And until the pressure was gone there was nothing they could do. But it was already 8 in the evening by this point, and I was getting worse nearly by the minute. They couldn't get me to wake up, and I was in so much pain I was still moving and groaning without being conscious. They told my brother that I was going to die. Had him call my family, my wife. They had already done what they could. Taken x-rays, mris, a head scan, I don't remember what it was called. ECT maybe. It wasn't until 11 o'clock that night that they decided to do a last ditch effort. If it didn't work I would die, if it went wrong I could end up paralyzed. This time they took me to the OR. My brother says I never woke up once and he thought that when they left him at the door to the room he'd never see me alive again. He said he'd made the calls already at that point and everyone was expecting his next one to say I was gone. My memory comes in not long after this. I don't know how it happened, there was no one to really tell me the full account but I woke up sometime between the 3rd and 4th vial of fluid they pulled out of my back in the OR. I remember laying on my stomach and I guess I moved or did something and there were 3 nurses holding my shoulders and hips down. I didn't fight it, didn't have the energy until I got really nauseous. I started throwing up right in the OR. Once it passed the doctor asked me if I could move and I remember saying yes. She had me shift to the right and pulled the last vial of fluid out of my back. She was very surprised with all the medication I had been given to make me comfortable that I was even awake. She had me roll over once it was done, I even got back on the gurney myself. When they wheeled me out of the OR about an hour after I'd gone in my brother started crying when he saw my eyes were open and I was awake. He couldn't even talk and I was too tired. All he did was hold my hand. I thought he was going to break it. They took me back to the room, and it was so weird. My headache was gone. I was conscious. And I didn't have any clue what was going on. My brother didn't want to tell me, all he'd say is he needed to call my family and my wife. I'm a bit headstrong so I didn't let him. Instead I made the call. First to my mom, and when she answered the phone she was already crying. She thought it was THE call. Instead she heard my voice and broke down further. She was afraid of never hearing it again. The next to my wife, who didn't answer because while it might have taken a bit of time she did get on that plane. I'd been in the hospital and unconscious since 3, and they'd been afraid of me dying since at least 8. This was about midnight. Then I let my brother call everyone else. But I was alive. Incredibly tired, and slightly nauseous but alive. And still mostly confused about what was really going on. The doctor came back in not long after and told me what was going on. Meningitis, Encephalitis. They didn't know about the West Nile factor yet but they knew something else was wrong because I had more symptoms than I should for what was going on, and they still didn't get all of the fluid out. 6 vials, and it wasn't enough. But it was much better. The next 2 days after that I was quarantined at the hospital and they discovered it was West Nile Meningitis. Doctors and nurses had to wear protective gear to come in and treat me. I was technically still infectious. The CDC was called because it had taken me so long to get treated they couldn't be sure of who else I could have infected. It wasn't until they discovered it was bacterial rather than viral meningitis that the quarantine was lifted. I went through 15 rounds of heavy antibiotics. I was put on nausea medication, painkillers for the slightly reoccurring headache and they took blood twice a day. I also had to go through about 5 bags of saline solution because I was dehydrated from everything that occurred up to me being admitted. 3 days after the procedure I was released. A little weak, a lot tired, and still a little sick but no longer infectious and most definitely alive.
I had follow-ups. I had to get more testing done. 3 months and $17,000 dollars later I've got a full and clean bill of health, and seemingly no lasting damage. No side effects from all of it. And my friends make some new jokes. Like how even West Nile can't bring me down. Or how I am actually dead but so fierce the grim reaper is afraid to come get me (This one was my little brother). I suppose looking back on it now I can see the chaos of it all but in my memory I was mostly just sleeping a lot. It's weird to remember sleeping, just sleeping, and waking up to being told you nearly died. And this time it wasn't something I'd done, not an accident I got into. It was just a freak happenstance. A one off shot that I got bit by that mosquito and yet my whole life changed.
I sit here behind my computer screen yet again a changed woman. One I hope has grown infinitely from the girl I was 3 and a half years ago. I finally started being honest with myself, and yeah I've had to suffer a lot since. Losing my grandmother, an uncle, a large way of life I used to live, and nearly my life, but I've gained so much too. The love of my life, a new perspective, a better relationship with my family, new friends. Everything along the way just sort of turned around and came out for the better after life kept trying to break me. But it didn't. It couldn't.
I suppose this all has been a really long winded way to get everything off my chest to say this: That sad, scared, lonely little girl that was hiding herself and locking everything away that you knew? She's not here anymore. I can finally say I'm a changed person that's no longer hiding. No longer lashing out. I'm good. I'm really good. I'm happy, and healthy, and while I will apologize profusely for the past that's precisely what it is. My past. That is not me anymore. A part of me yes. The past is always a part of you, and helps shape who you become but it doesn't have to be who you are. And I'm not. Even as soon as 3 months ago....I'm not who I was that day either.
I know some will read this and think I want pity for being in the hospital. I don't. Not in the least. I'm perfectly fine and healthy. I'm actually healthier than I've ever been. I don't want sympathy or pity for any of of it. The best thing you could do if you choose to read this is take to heart what I'm really trying to say. You're okay, and you will continue to be no matter what if you let yourself. Don't settle for the worst version of you that you can be. Break yourself down over and over again until you can put the pieces back together in a way you want to be proud of. And most of all don't let anyone do it for you. This is your life. Live it every single day the fullest.
writerfreak