And it goes on and on and on and on.

I've decided to shorten these posts a bit. About my health.
So, you can have controlled bursts instead of acute poisoning.

Where did I leave off?
Oh yes, the first night in ICU.

I arrived at the hospital room (my family must have been there), and got settled into the first hospital bed I'd ever stayed in. It was a pretty nice room. The pediatric ICU had just been remodeled thanks to generous donations from 10 big businesses in town. The businesses each got to put a giant plaque above the sliding glass doors to the 10 intensive care rooms. Mine was Wal Mart. It was decorated in soft blues and whites. Low calming lighting shone from bubble lamps mounted on the wall, and the faint beeping seemed almost therapeutic.
It was 3 in the morning after I got settled in that first night. They started me on Digoxin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digoxin) and gave me some medicine for the pain, probably morphine. I slept peacefully for the first time in weeks.

The next few days were pretty average, I got to talk to my 5th grade class on the phone and they were all jealous that I got whatever I wanted with the press of a button. Letters and pictures started pouring in from all over the country, from school, relatives, and random church-goers from all kinds of places, who'd heard about me through the grapevine of prayer lists. I hanged everything on my wall, and soon my room looked like an art gallery.
Word spreads fast.

I was starting to feel, cautiously, stable. The doctors and nurses took a liking to me and I started to feel comfortable instead of scared. I remember two nurses specifically, Michelle, and Angie. They were wonderful.
One day, a doctor brought in a portable computer on wheels, and sat down on my bed to actually tell me what was going on. He showed me pictures of my heart and explained what everything meant. He pressed my fingernails and showed me the difference in blood flow from his. He pointed to my weight loss and blue lips and sunken eyes. I understood, a little more, after that visit.

I was comfortable. It had been a week and I was even in a bit of a routine. Wake up, play Nintendo 64, watch a movie (Waterworld, over and over and over), drink jones soda my mom brought me, talk to lots of people on the phone, sleep, sleep, sleep, medicine. Just stuff.
One night, at 8, I started to feel funny. Doctors and nurses came running in screaming stuff, they were staring at the monitors behind me on the wall. They gave me the torture medicine again, trying to slow my heart, but to no avail. The last thing I remember before I passed out is straining my neck to look above my head at the monitor. My heart rate was climbing, and when I lost consciousness it hit 240 bpm. I had had a heart attack, at 11 years old.

Two days later when I woke up, my mom, my sister, my aunt and her husband, my dad and his new wife (my momma now, Amy) and other people were in the room with me. Amy momma was stroking my leg, and she smiled at me. My parents had to do an emergency conference with my team of doctor's to put urgent priority on my transplant status. At this point they were still trying to get me on the list, but time was running out.
During the conference, my mom had a nervous breakdown and embarrassed herself in front of all my doctors by starting a fight with my dad about the size of his new wife's ring. Wondering why he spent the money on it instead of child support. It was a big huge deal, that I occasionally still hear about to this day .

But whatever happened in that room, I was listed that day, as a status 1a, the worst of the worst and sickest amongst the sick. I didn't ever recuperate from that incident. I was so sick I couldn't get out of bed.
People started talking to me like I was already dead. Everyone cried around me. But I hadn't cried since that first night. I started to wonder if I would ever cry again. My aunt and her husband approached me one day, and the notoriously cold and detached "uncle", who had always yelled at me and was mean to my cousins, broke down and started crying...thanking me for saving his marriage. They realized what was important in life now.
My other aunt approached me after getting off the phone with my grandma in the corner of my room. "She just said she loves me...that's the first time she's ever said that to me, it's a miracle, and it's because of you".

It was all so overwhelming.
I was lucky enough to be alone one day, sitting up in bed, feeling depressed. Nurse Angie was giving me a sponge bath, and I started sobbing. She was startled at first, but regained her composure and asked what was wrong.
"I don't want to die!"
She embraced me and held me while we cried together. It was the first time I'd cried in two weeks, and definitely the first time I'd faced my mortality. I'm glad I wasn't alone that first time. What a good person that woman is.

That's all for today.