The concept of time was lost on me and I learned to tell night from day by the rotation of the nurses. A new batch at 7am and 7pm. 7pm was also visiting times. My glass chamber was right in front of the entrance but now that I had moved, I was in a somber corner of the ICU. I saw my mom walk in and stare blankly into the glass room I was in. It was now empty and dismay set into her face. I could clearly see her and wanted to shout out to her so that she could see I was still alive. She had of course thought the worst. She looked frantically round for some sort of help and finally saw me, tears in her eyes, she shuffled towards me with my dad trailing her. She did her routine of prayer and sprinkling ashes around my bed. They were happy to see that I was out of that room. One step closer to home, my dad said, but I felt far from it. I maintained a pleasant disposition but was falling apart internally. No sense could be made of my emotions and I seem to be coming down from roughly 6 weeks of morphine. I saw things. I heard things. I felt things.
I had several visitors this evening. Nieces, sister, husband and friends. They all had words of encouragement and love but it wasn’t enough. I needed to be me again. How to express this to them? I shan’t. This is my fight. They left and I prepared for the long night ahead sans sleep. A nurse came over to dispatch my medication. This now included an injection in my tummy which was decorated with healing surgical wounds. The pain inflicted by the needle was minuscule in comparison to everything else but it was pain none the less. A pill to numb, a pill to sleep, a pill to dull this pain you keep. Masterchef was no longer on my television. I was on some sort of movie channel now. I watched whatever was playing, without sound, in an effort to combat sleep at all costs. Was that… Was that Mel Gibson? A new movie? The man who holds my heart and our baby will be thrilled. It was some sort of mining expedition with children being used as labourers. The children were working in a dry, arid place when they struck something in the ground. One of them fell into a hole and felt every bit of terror that a real life scenario would invoke. When the boy child landed, he was covered with some sort of poisonous iguana lizard creatures. They were tiny and menacing. I looked at this little boy with his reptilian debacle and felt sick to my stomach. I could feel them crawling on me. I could hear their scaley eyes making revolutions in their sockets. I could sense their murderous intent in my core. The ceiling started to move closer to my face. This again. I knew I could break free from the chaotic illusion my mind was creating but coming to that realisation was a monstrous task. I focused so much on the movie that I was trying to pry the reptiles off of my skin. My hands were not moving. Sparks were toying with my sanity, dancing in front of my eyes threatening an escape from reality. I felt my body lift up and convulse and tried with all of my might not to swallow my tongue. I was crying. I was vomiting. I was submitting. In my submission, my body began to relax. My mind was clear and I saw myself. White sheets. Bloody nose. Vacant eyes. Two nurses, one male the other female rushed to either side of my body. I felt the male nurse grab my right hand and he ushered me back to reality with a soft, poetic voice of desperation. I slipped back into my body when the paddles hit my chest. My flesh was aflame with electricity yet the imaginary reptiles continued to taunt and gnaw at my skin. I felt them draw blood. Blood. Vomit. Urine. Terror. The beeps on the machine slowed down and I was back in my own filth. The other little boy had succeeded in fending off the poisonous lizards. They were sitting in the heat of the sun, drinking water and questioning their lives. I too had questions….
I was cleaned up and given a sedative. It did not work.. I fought it tooth and nail. I will not sleep but giving up on it all seemed so easy. It seemed like a better route as opposed to fighting this fight of being trapped in this body. The nurses were upset that I would not sleep but their daggered looks and frivolous sentiments were lost on me. I had remembered my urge to fight now. Why I was fighting. Who I must live for. Myself. My husband. Our son. This will be the last day that I shed any tears. I need to get the fuck out of here now. The 4am coffee lady does her rounds and with it, I am given a new lease. A new more solid resolve. A new day has broken through the trenches and I have work to do. Wiggle your big toe. It moves. And so does both of my hands.
Everyday was an ebb and flow of defeat and small victories. The loss of movement in limbs and such is something no able person should have to endure. More so if one knows that they are functional but the mind does not transmit the necessary signals. A mental block. My body was doing everything it could to make me give up. Succumb. Submit. Subdue. I fell prey to the charm of death many times but a constant mental battle was always afoot. I am not strong but I am certainly not weak. I am stubborn. I am alive. I am here.
Khajiitwitch 
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