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queercripbreakfastenthusias-blog · 7 years

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A Thing About the Hospital

This is the seventh time I’ve tried to write this. I don’t really know what I’m trying to do, or if this one will stick, but here it goes.

On the eve of the first day of classes of this semester, I made myself a list of Junior Spring 2017 Semester Goals. With a significant chunk of my closest Bowdoin friends going abroad for the semester, a packed course schedule, and a new year’s resolution to practice radical self care, I knew it was going to be a semester of change, of new challenges, and of pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. In my pre-classes anxiety, I made myself a list of silly, serious, self-indulgent goals to find comfort and excitement in the changes to come.

But in reality, I had no idea what this semester was going to throw at me. Since January, I’ve been dealing with A Series of Unfortunate Medical Events, and I’m choosing to write about it and talk about it openly because that tends to be how I deal and process hard things best. I remember the ordeal in moments, in chunks, like pieces of a puzzle that I haven’t figured out how to solve yet. I’m choosing to share some of the pieces because I love my body. I love the messy reality of it, the fact that it can hug the people I love, that it can learn things that interest me, and take me places I want to see. I’m also terrified of my body—the unpredictability of it, the way it reminds me that we’re small beautiful globs of cells that exist in a universe much bigger and stronger than we are. The experience of this semester encapsulates all of that—the good, the powerful, the scary, the messy, and the imperfections.

To consolidate a month-long ordeal into a few quick sentences, here are the important things to know about what’s been happening with me: In late January/early February, I was hospitalized with a blood infection. The origins of the infection are still unknown, but I received an intensive IV-antibiotic therapy to fight the bacteria. I stayed five days at Mid Coast Hospital for the infection. Sionnain, my magnificent partner, happened to be visiting the day I was hospitalized, and stood by my side through this whole ordeal with endless bravery and love. My kickass mom flew in from New Jersey, and her patience with me and care for me speak volumes of what a fantastic, loving, forgiving parent she is. She bought kinetic sand and a ton of board games at Wal-Mart, and Sionnain and Mom and I built a giant sandcastle in my hospital room in the middle of a blizzard. They supported me, and comforted me, and didn’t laugh (or only laughed a little) when I accidentally flashed an entire hospital hallway with my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles underwear (hospital gowns, am I right?).

About twelve hours after being discharged for the infection, I ended up right back in the hospital with back pain so bad I couldn’t breathe or move or speak. A blood clot stopped the flow of oxygen to a portion of my lung, killing a small section of my right lung. I had a pulmonary embolism, and found out I have a genetic blood clotting disorder. Having an infection, a clotting disorder, and being holed up in a hospital bed—it was the perfect storm of conditions for me to get a blood clot. I spent another four days in the hospital, and then was discharged to re-enter life at Bowdoin. As a physically disabled queer person, my relationship with my body has never been an easy one. The medical stuff hit on a ton of my messy fears related to control over and comfort within my body. To put it simply, this whole ordeal was just that: an ordeal. I cried because of ableist doctors, dealt with homophobic nurses, missed exams, quit a campus job, and had to drop a class. I’m now back in a “normal” Bowdoin routine, and I’ve been slowly regaining my footing. I’ve been contending with the uncomfortable, scary reality that sometimes, we lose control and shitty things happen. There isn’t always a witty punchline or a bright side or a neatly packaged life lesson to take away when something unexpected and hard happens. So that brings me here: to the end of my junior spring, alive and recovering and healthy, which feels miraculous and small and bizarre and normal all at once.

I’m the same person I was on that January night when I wrote these semester goals. However, it would be partially inaccurate to say that things haven’t changed. Taking care of my body means something very different now than it did before this all happened. My body is my home. My body has always been my home that kept me safe for twenty-one years, until suddenly, it didn’t keep me safe anymore. Suddenly, my body threatened me and defied me with clots and bacteria and pain and exhaustion. That was terrifying. But my body is still my home. Just as it fought me, it ultimately protected me. And I forgive my body, because my body allowed me to heal, to survive, and to reach out for the people I love when it felt like my body was betraying me. Now, caring for my body means trusting it, and listening to what it is trying to tell me. It means listening and responding to the pain, the exhaustion, the limits. My body is my home, and homes need upkeep. Homes need repair. This semester, I’ve become a human Home Depot project of restoration and care. I’ve had to ask for help, and it’s been painful, and I’ve made mistakes along the way, but this semester has shown me that my body—my home—has to come first. Rather than making me weak, I think that makes me strong as hell.

When I said that one of my semester goals was to have more dance parties, I didn’t really think that my first dance party of the semester would be the day I was discharged. I was told that in order to prevent more blood clots I needed to be frequently and actively moving, so naturally, on the day I got home Alix and Ethan and Sionnain spun and jumped around my room with me to Blink-182 and ABBA and Cher. Sometimes dance parties look different than you envision. Sometimes goals need amending, and don’t really go as planned. But let me tell you: a dance party is a dance party, whether you’re shimmying your shoulders while hooked up to an IV, or rejoicing in life and health and survival with the people you love. And there is joy in that.

In a lot of ways, things feel different now. Being at Bowdoin feels the same and unknown and confusing all at once. I am learning and re-learning what it means to be alive and take up space on this campus and in this world. I guess I am figuring it out, but honestly, I don’t really know what all of this means or why any of this happened. However, I do know that I am surrounded by people who love me, and help me survive and make sense of it all. Ultimately, that’s what matters. I owe my recovery, and being okay, and becoming more okay every day, to a lot of people. To all of my friends at Bowdoin who fed me snacks and visited me in the hospital. To Clare, for letting me cry on the phone and bringing me a McFlurry in the ER. To Tessa, for making me go to the hospital to begin with, and always knowing what to say, and always showing up in the most important way. To Sydney, for encouraging me to write this. To my Dad and my siblings, for dropping everything and flying to be near me and make me laugh. To my Mom, for staying in Maine for two weeks in the middle of February even though the only shoes she packed were leather clogs, and for letting me be cranky, and for being nice and caring and endlessly supportive even when I acted like a jerk to her. And to Sionnain, for helping me put the puzzle pieces together, for holding my hand and loving me so fiercely through all of it, and for everything. There aren’t enough words to capture how thankful I am.

During the long days in the hospital, Sionnain and I would walk down the endless corridors to keep me moving. She’d wheel my IV pole along, her hand wrapped around it securely as we slowly moved, side by side, through those increasingly familiar hallways. We joked that Sionnain holding my IV pole was like us holding hands—the thin plastic tube and metal pole connected us as we meandered. We would walk down a maze of hallways to the Meditation Room, a small room built for reflection and prayer. It offered a quiet bluish glow, with stained glass, cheesy plastic bird statues, and a loop recording of babbling water. For small moments out of the visibility of the hallways, I could stand in the purple light of that small room, close my eyes, hold Sionnain’s reassuring hand, and find myself away from the hospital chaos. There was a book in the corner that people could sign and leave words of hope or prayers. On the day I was admitted, someone wrote about losing her brother that morning. Ed, we will miss you. The next day, five-year-old Maddie wrote a note welcoming her new baby brother, Collin, into the world. I AM A BIG SESTER.

In the course of this whole event, people have been born, and died, and lost loved ones, and set goals they couldn’t achieve, and gotten diagnoses, and shopped at Home Depot, and seen new places, and eaten McFlurrys, and had dance parties, and built sandcastles in Maine in February. People have laughed, and cried, and figured it out, and gotten in wrong, and made mistakes. I’m still figuring it out, and reminding myself that it’s okay to not really know what I’m doing or why this happened or what it means. I am alive and loved and loving and a beautiful glob of cells that gets to exist in this universe, and that works for me.

#what are you supposed to put down here #disability #queerness #hospital #Cerebral Palsy

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