Thursday, July 1, 2010

Things I'm still processing

I can't keep these things down anymore, so here we go with some of the things I still need to get out:

The misunderstanding when the emergency room first called and told me they were taking Fred in for a CT scan to check for brain activity. Later I learned they wouldn't check for activity with a CT scan but an injury. I know the person who told me that was not a medical person at the hospital, so who knows if I was told the wrong thing or I heard wrong. Regardless, I spent the next 5 hours not really knowing if Fred was even in there.

Being in the ER in Denver as the team of doctors and nurses examine him. His feet were yellow and he was shaking. It could have been the medication or he was cold, but I was by myself and scared out of my mind.

They extubated Fred on the second day in the ICU, and nobody asked me to leave the room for this procedure. Big mistake. The whole medical piece of it was not that nasty but seeing Fred in pain while they took the tube out hurt my heart and still makes me cry.

The fear of leaving Fred each night for the first week when he was being impulsive and having to trust that he would be safe.

Fred started coming out of sedation on the second day, but it took him a few days to recognize me. He was highly medicated and confused with what year it was and where he was, but it was hard to not be able to see love or recognition in his eyes. I'm not mad at him about this because it wasn't intentional. I'm just trying to process that pain.

The emotional pain of watching someone you love be in physical pain and not being able to anything for him. For me, this was sitting by Fred's side while he has to ride through the pain of nasty headaches because he was maxed out on pain meds.

My life felt like a piece of paper that was torn up into tiny pieces and thrown into the air like confetti. I had to let go and know there was no way I would ever catch all the pieces and put them back together the way they looked before. Life is fragile and beautiful. I'm putting my pieces back together. I no longer have a simple piece of paper, but a beautiful piece of artwork that is my life.

4 comments:

  1. I love that last paragraph so much.

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  2. I love that last paragraph too - very touching. What really tore me up was the sentence about not really knowing if Fred was even in there. I'm sorry you had to go through not knowing that for that time period - but I'm glad he was really in there!!

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  3. Can't even imagine! There is a song by Mat Kearney that has a line in it..."We are all just one phone call from our knees." How true...how true. Hopefully over time, these memories will heal like the injuries.

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  4. Very profound, Jenna. You are healing. I can see it.

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