Not a rave:

A rant:
Last night, I went to the hospital. I have a history of sudden death, as in my heart has suddenly stopped and I've died. This has happened twice in the past. It starts with my heart losing rhythm and then slowing, and then, not being able to return to normal, it gives up. And I'm dead.
Soooo, when my heart slowed suddenly from 122 beats per minute, to 50 beats per minute, I decided I didn't feel like dying alone in my crappy bedroom, so I went to the emergency room.
It was a fucking waste of time. The admitting woman actually had me "hold on" after I told her what I was there for, so she could loudly and obviously finish her gossip session with her co-worker. When I got back to my room, the dumbass ER nurse kept insisting it's "protocol" to put in an IV. No, I have a port, I told her. I won that battle. Next, an idiot med student comes in, doesn't listen to me ("So, you're having chest pain?"..."No"... "So, where exactly does it hurt when you get the chest pain?"). Then the real doctor, who got offended when I said I wanted him to call my doctor in St. Louis, "You know, we have perfectly competent cardiologists here, why don't you want to see them?"...sheesh.
Finally, 3 hours later, the doctor comes back in and says I can go home. There doesn't appear to be anything wrong, and my St.Louis cardiologist would contact me tomorrow.

Well, this has happened now 5 times today. A huge difference from the other times I've had arrhythmias. On the discharge papers it read: If you experience shortness of breath (check), lightheadedness (check), or chest tightness (check) at the same time as the arrhythmia, or if it lasts more than 20 minutes (check) please return to the emergency room promptly.
I had all those things!! What the fuck? Why don't my doctors take me seriously? I know there is something very wrong with my heart! WHAT THE FUCK?

So home I went, and sleep I did not get, scared shitless that I would die in my sleep I sat awake writing letters and listening to music.

When no one from my cardiologist's office called me by 1pm today, I called them. "The nurses are all out of the office at this time, can I take a message?" the receptionist says, and I can't help but flashback to being in the hospital and the transplant nurse telling me that she sometimes ignores calls from annoying people who call in all the time. So I left a message and my number.
Four o'clock rolled around and lo and behold, no phone call.
Apparently, my heart almost stopping on a regular basis isn't cause for concern. Apparently, I'm being overly cautious and sensitive.
Let's not forget that I am on a fucking IV drip at home, giving me an antibiotic that's main side effect is "Muscle Deterioration" well, hmmm, my heart is a fucking muscle! Put two and two together? Maybe it's not such a long shot to at least consider that it could also cause arrhythmias, and to at least feign interest or concern.
Let's not forget that I just got out of the hospital a week ago tomorrow, for a fucking STAPHYLOCOCCUS blood infection! Let's not forget that my roommates are all fucking nasty unhygienic douchbags who can't wash their hands after they wipe shit from their asses, and who can't wash a dish with hot water or antibacterial soap because it's bad for the environment. Who can't fathom with their tiny brains, what it's like to be susceptible to disease and illness. That if I catch what they have, it's 10 times worse, and lasts 10 times longer.
And because of that, I now have the flu on top of everything. Very badly. Fever, muscle aches, runny/stuffy nose, sore throat, headache, the whole nine yards. Thanks, assholes.
I wore a mask into the kitchen earlier, and explained that it was to prevent everyone else from getting sick again, and thus infecting each other over and over. "But I already had it!" one of my roommates exclaimed.
"You can get it again, and besides, I have a resistant strain of whatever this shit is, because I don't have an immune system and..." This is when the person started the microwave and interrupted me to ask if anyone had ever tried the variety of squash she was holding.

I'm feeling super negative right now. Super Duper negative time.
Wah.
Wah.
Wah.
Blah blah my life is poopy sometimes, blah blah blah.
BLERRGGGhhh. ah.

Numb

I'm numb to this.
I cried last night. I begged my body to let me go on this trip. I begged it.
It didn't work.
When my fever reached 104.8 around 6 o'clock this morning, I had to quit pretending like it would just go away. I went to the emergency room and soon thereafter was in an ambulance on my (not so) merry way to St.Louis. Again. For the same shit I've been in the hospital for the last 3 months.
I can't stand this shit.
I was going on this 2 week trip so that I could get away. So I could experience something new...which rarely happens at this point in my life.
So I could prove to myself that my doctors don't rule my life. That I have control over my life. That I have free will.
Guess I got taught a lesson, eh?
It's so nauseating, completely devastating, for me to have made this fucking HUGE decision...to take myself off the transplant list during one of the busiest weeks of the year (read: prime time for car accidents and thus organ donors) so that I could do this. This is a decision I've been rolling over in my brain for the whole time I've been on the list, almost 3 years, and it's a decision I felt guilty for, but had committed to completely.
I feel numb because I'm upset, but I can't express it. I'm sad and depressed and utterly deflated on a level so deep that it's not registering. I feel it in the deepest pit of my chest, in the core of my being.

I feel completely defeated.

I feel like I am being punished, but in vain I try to find an answer that doesn't exist, I can never know if that's the case.

This is something other than suicidal. I don't feel like not living anymore, but I don't want to do this shit. I don't want this body. I don't want it.
I wouldn't give it to anyone else...that's how much I hate it. I would never wish it on anyone, ever. I just want to live my life like a normal fucking person. A healthy person who is dumb to the horrors their bodies can wreak. To the loss of control that illness brings. To the inability to control even a SINGLE fucking aspect of your existence.

I want to live in oblivion to heart failure and kidney failure and blood infections and surgery and death and I don't want to be some stealer of organs. I don't want my liveliness to DEPEND on someone else's death.
Shit.

Well...I guess I'll deal with it, because it's better than the alternative, but that's certainly a shitty couple of decisions.

Engulfed, Enclosed, Enveloped, In Rapture.

Sometimes. I feel like...and I'm aware of the relative ridiculousness of this statement, but it's fitting and it makes sense of things I can't make sense of otherwise...
I think part of my soul is bound to a different place.

I've been getting flashbacks again, flashbacks of my dreams.
From long ago.
My eyes glaze over and it's like I'm there. I had the weirdest experience yesterday, trying to write down my dream from the night before, and a part of the dream reminded me of a very odd one from high school.
A dream I wrote down but avoided since. I even folded the page in, so that if I was scrolling through the journal, I wouldn't get sucked into it.

As I was writing about my dream yesterday, I remembered it.

My eyes were fluttering, nothing else on my body moved. I was frozen, my hands still in position on the keyboard (I now keep dream journals on my computer) and I was fighting it. I had tears in my eyes. I didn't want to go there...anywhere but there...but that fucking beach. I tried so hard to snap back into reality, but I just couldn't. After a few futile attempts at bringing my mind back to the present I was there.
The sound of the waves, the smell and taste of salt in the air. The gray sand, and the even grayer skies. The purring of the clouds...like constant thunder. The water in the ocean is gray, too. A slate/gray/black color, and the foam, cream colored.
I stand, facing the water and the infinite skyline.
Behind me, there stands a two-story light gray wall made from over-sized concrete blocks. There are stairs leading up to the wall, and you make a short journey across the top to the stairs leading down to the other side, where a grocery store resides.
I walk, slowly to the water. I simply want to feel the waves cover my feet. I relish the first wave, my eyes closed. I open my eyes to watch the second one. I spot something small and black in the water. The waves brought it near my feet, only a few steps farther forward...
I see a dead child. An infant, bloated, green and gray and red and rotting. It's mouth is horrifyingly twisted, into an adult expression of extreme agony.
I scream, but per usual in my dream world, nothing comes out. I weep as I move the baby with a stick out of the wave's arms.
I have to go all the way to the grocery store to get a black trash bag. I anticipate it won't be, but when I get back to the beach, the dead baby is still there.
I turn the bag inside out and grab the baby, then flip it back right side out, so I avoid touching its peeling skin. It's rashy, splotchy, flapping-in-the-breeze chunks of flesh.
I run to the grocery store, and for some reason I have to put the bag through the checkout, maybe to see what I have to do with it. As it's going on the conveyor belt, it starts moving. The bag is rustling, and people start looking at me funny. Suddenly the most horrifying, loud, piercing, tormented, miserable, formidable, spine-tingling, hair-raising scream I've ever witnessed, came creeping out of the bag. It slapped me in the face. My ears fucking hurt, they start bleeding, I can feel it running down my neck. The scream stops. I stare at the bag, and no one else is left in the store. The bag moves again, and out steps the decaying child. It looks at me, one eyeball flopping about. It slowly raises it's hand and points at me. I scream, and a bag boy suddenly appears and tackles it.

I remember, suddenly, that this is my child. I was pregnant, I was with child, but didn't want it anymore. I took it from my womb and threw it into the ocean. I forgot about it, blocked it out of my mind.

I am furious at this...thing. I remember, and all the hate and resentment come rushing back in a flood of emotions. I grab something hard...perhaps a broom. I start beating the sack on the floor. The bag boy joins in, kicking and punching the bag. The squishing sounds are sickening. I finish by grabbing the bag and slamming it over and over again into the linoleum floor. The boy grabs my arms and leads me to the dumpster outside with the bag. I toss it in. I feel better.

But I'll never forget the way that infant looked at me, and the way it accused me of an unmentionable crime I'd forgotten.



And so...this is why I think I'm torn between two...maybe more...places. These dreams are like nothing I've read about. They have nothing to do with my real life. Oh, sure I have dreams that I can easily identify, like Heath Ledger walking by in a towl...classic. But a rotting infant and the ocean? The scream?
I've had dreams in which I get some kind of wound, someone touches me, once I got my wrist pierced...and I can feel it. Completely and totally. I feel the pain as if it's completely real and happening.

What's so boggling to me, is why it's crossing over. Is it possible for your dreams to pull your mind into them? I'm awake, I'm doing real-world stuff, like walking, or painting, or typing...and suddenly I'm there, I'm not asleep. I don't understand.
But what's so scary about the whole thing is that I don't want it to stop. I feel like I'm a part of something bigger than me. Infinite and eternal. I feel like I am a part of something ancient, and that the more I get involved in it, the more I can learn. The more I can understand. I don't want it to stop.
I used to want it to...because I thought something was wrong with me. Voices started talking to me in the dreams. I had many dreams about various apocalypses. I had prophetic dreams (you don't have to believe me), where what I dreamed, happened later.

When I was approximately 7 years old, my mother used to stop at a store in Lincoln, Ne called "the way home"...if I remember correctly. It was a native-american shaman inspired store. She would stop to get her tarot read, or her fortune told by the in house psychic. There was an old native american man who would stand at this glass dome covering a miniature weathervane, we're talking the size of my pinkie. Once, while I waited patiently for my mother, I asked the man what he was doing. He told me he was moving the weathervane with his mind, strengthening it. I asked him how, and over the next few visits, he taught me to prepare my mind using exercises, like moving my hands until I felt a sponge-like substance between them. After I learning to tune into my mind, I tried controlling the weathervane, and it bent to my will. I could turn it left or right only, of course. No matrix bendy shit. But it was a powerful experience.

I know it must sound like total bullshit. But I assure you, these are real experiences.

There was a time once, sitting in art class, when suddenly I looked up from my table and said "the phone's going to ring"...my friend at the time looked at me, and the phone rang. After a while there was a group of people around the table, freaked out, skeptical. I predicted 4 phone calls and 3 songs on the radio, then it was gone. It was very weird.

I used to think I could detect Auras, before I knew what Aura's were. I could...feel...not necessarily see...a certain energy around particular people I encountered. I associated those energies with colors. I eventually started to feel crazy, and only told a few people, who also made me feel crazy. Recently, I met a woman who is now a dear friend. I can detect the strangest Aura I've ever been around. It's invisible. She's like a piece of lace. Her connection to this earth is thin, wispy, and all around unattached. Perhaps attached like a spiderweb to a wall.
It's made me start thinking about the Aura detection again. I had pretty much put all that behind me. I had stopped tuning into energies.
It's all so big. So much bigger than me. But I think I'm ready to learn more.
I'm skeptical...I mean, maybe I'm really just totally insane. Maybe I have schizophrenia (it runs in my family) or something. Or maybe, I'm not completely of this world. I like that option better.

Fin.

The morning After...

Whew...it's been a long time. 3 months almost. This year has gone by incredibly fast. Ironically, the reason I haven't been posting is related to my health, but that's another story completely.
So here goes...


I woke up, back in the ICU, only this time a different room, smaller.
The first three things I did with my new life were: feel the extreme urge to piss, feel extreme anger at the surgeon for lying to me about the anesthesia, and feel thirstier than a deserted traveler in the desert after 4 weeks of walking and maybe this person ate a bit of sand, too. Also, dirt, and cactus barbs for good measure.

I don't remember feeling any pain. I wasn't breathing on my own, and what a peculiar feeling it is to have your chest moving up and down with the expansion of your lungs, and to not be doing it yourself. The machine made breathing noises, even.
I couldn't see very well those first few hours after I woke up. I slipped in and out of consciousness, and it's like a dream even now. The sound of suction as my family slurped the saliva I wasn't able to swallow out of my face with a spit vacuum like they use in dentists offices.

My mom's face above me, my dad and amy and my sister, nurses, doctors, everyone looking down on me as if I weren't quite part of their world yet, but definitely not part of the world I'd known before.

There was a small ball in my hand, with a button, and the ball was secured to my hand with tape and fasteners. Michelle, my nurse explained to me during one of my bouts of alertness, that if I felt pain I only had to press the button, and a dose of pain medicine would be delivered to me. I did it before she stopped talking, and a satisfying beeping noise was predecessor to my passing out.

I pressed that button a shit ton those first 24 hours. It was only later that I learned it only delivered pain medicine in controlled doses over several hours, and that the button was shown to increase recovery time by empowering the patient.
Interesting.

What must have been, I would guess, about the 23rd hour out of surgery, it was time to take out the breathing tube. "This isn't going to feel very good, but it's a positive step forward in your recovery. We are going to count to three and on three you have to cough as hard as you can, and we'll pull out the tube. You'll feel a lot of pressure, but it's okay."
everyone knows that "lot of pressure" means pain.
And it was painful.
On three, I coughed as hard as I could, which was more akin to a mouse whisper than a "cough". They tugged the tube out hard and fast, ripping the sides of my esophagus. I could taste the blood in my throat, and I screamed my newborn scream, loud, long, satisfyingly intense and horrifyingly real. The only thing missing, really, was the doctor slapping my ass and handing me to my mommy.

But, I could breathe. On my own, laying down, no puking involved. Without the loud noises the machine made while breathing for me, I was able to hear the slow, steady beating of my new heart. The healthy and strong way it moved my body while it beat, ready to go, ready to support my youthful endeavors. It got a second chance, too, you know. It got scared shitless when it thought it might die in that girl, and now here it was, being alive, eager to prove it's worthiness and dedication.
"I want to talk to the surgeon"...those were my first words.

The more I woke up, the less pain medicine they allowed me, the more real my experience became. I was so fucking thirsty. Worse than I could ever possibly explain. It had been over 48 hours since my last drink, with the immunosuppressants the night of my surgery admission. I was hydrated from IV drips, but my mouth was desperate and my lips were chapped and cracking.
I begged, cried, squealed for water. "Please, give me water" but all that was allowed were these tiny little sponges, flavored like cotton candy and bubblegum. I think there was a nasty cherry flavored one, too. They were only as big as a nickel,
and held about 6 drips from a faucet of water. It was worse than just being thirsty. It was torturous.
I convinced my Grandma (rest her soul), in my raspy broken voice, to break the rules when no one else was around. To refill the sponge over and over, and after several refills, it resembled something like a drink of liquid.

It was time to sit up now. Maybe halfway through the second day in ICU. The bed was slowly raised to allow me to sit up. Excruciatingly painful, it felt as if my insides would burst through my chest.
But I was sitting up, and after a bit more pain medicine, I was ready to see Dr. Behrendt, my surgeon.
Here he is:

And while we're at it...my transplant doctor who took care of me before and after my transplant until 2004, Dr. Edens:


Dr. Behrendt walked into the room with a swarm of busy bumble bee students. He was very jolly acting, excited to see my remarkable progress. He just thought I wanted to thank him. His face was very...irritated, when I accused him. I said in these words, or close to them "I want to tell you something. You lied to me. I'm very upset with you, you told me you would let me know when you were putting me to sleep, and I don't remember that happening. I remember them telling me they were putting oxygen on my face, and then I woke up here. I could have died, and the last words I ever would have heard, would have been a lie."
He was completely dumbfounded. He apologized, and I was silent as he awkwardly backed out of the room, with a look mixed with annoyance, shame, and frustration. Mostly annoyance though...because he probably thought I was an ungrateful little bitch.
Which I realize now, I kind of was. My heart didn't magically insert itself into my chest, this man, this stranger had taken 7-8 hours of his time to calmly, patiently, and lovingly (seriously, look at the amazing job he did on my scar, or lack thereof) make my life better. I didn't even say thank you.
I also realize now that I could have fallen asleep on my own from the pre-sedative, or I could just not remember them telling me, or might not have heard the words clearly through all my anxiety and crying. I feel kind of bad. Maybe I should write him a letter.

Anyway. I was sitting up. Next hurdle: learning to walk. Next time, on day's of my life.

<3

Home is where the heart...dies.

Okay, the last post was like a brief intermission in the story telling.
Now I'll resume.

I left off going home...Okay.
Home. Leaving the hospital was simple enough. They gave me medicine to take everyday, and a pager to my mother, so she would know if a heart came.

Home was...surreal. The dynamics of living in a space where everyone is tip-toeing around an issue are very unnerving. My mom's usually rocky relationship with her shit boyfriend, Scott, was now hush hush. No one argued in front of me. My Aunt and Uncle and 4 cousins came to stay with us for a couple weeks from Nebraska.

I felt pretty stable. If you didn't know better, you'd think nothing was wrong with me. I played with my family, we set up a tent in the huge front yard and grilled out on the concrete patio. I remember my hamburger didn't have seasoning (low salt diet) and was shaped like a heart. I also remember sneaking my favorite food, pickles, when no one was looking.
On a couple of occasions, I got to go to school. I would get dropped off by my mom, and then she would pick me up at lunch. I was treated like some sort of celebrity. There was even a camera crew that showed up in the principal's office one day. They followed me around school and did an interview with me, too. I was the bees knees, the talk of the town. The sad little dying girl that everyone wanted to be a part of for a short time. Everyone is attracted to tragedy, or so it seemed.

My life went on like this for about 2 weeks. My family eventually needed to go home to their own lives and jobs. Once it settled down, and school was over for the summer, life was very routine. Wake up, eat a peanut butter and honey sandwich, take medicine, watch TV, eat dinner, sleep.

I still slept sitting almost completely upright every night. I coughed and coughed, and puked regularly because of the fluid in my lungs. My heart was three times the size it was supposed to be, so my movements and thoughts were sluggish at best.
I was a shadow of a person, and certainly not very childlike. It's pretty hard not to lose that innocence when everyone around you is whispering about your death, and you overhear your mom planning your funeral on the phone. I could see through everyone's fake kindness and I resented it.

Three weeks came and went very quickly.
The 29th of June.
That day started like any other. Routine, normal, or as normal as could be expected.
The day passed, and I got ready for bed. But I felt weird, strange, surreal. I remember feeling a calm presence.
I don't even know what that means, or if I'm explaining it correctly. I just felt...calm. My mom went to bed, and I went into my room. The lights were all off and I laid on the floor. I could see out the window of my room and I stared at the stars for the better part of an hour, then just sat in the middle of my floor, bathed in moonlight. I wasn't thinking about anything at all. My mind was completely blank, just trying to understand what I was feeling. Something was going to happen. I started thinking maybe I would die if I fell asleep, like maybe my body knew it would die tonight. So I wrote letters to my mom and my sister and put them on my dresser, and finally fell asleep.

I couldn't have slept long, and suddenly I shot up from my bed. Wide awake I looked at the alarm clock and it blinked 2:50AM. I sat in eerie silence for a few seconds, feeling really fucking creeped out.
When the phone rang from the kitchen, it scared the crap out of me. I jumped out of bed and went as fast as I could to the hallway. I was out of breath as I listened to my mom groggily answer the phone. The house was a renovated pole barn like I mentioned before, and my mom's room was the loft above the huge living room. It used to be the hay hold. Everything that was said or done in her room echoed throughout the main part of the house. So I slumped to the floor of the hallway and listened.

"Really? When?" She said. Her voice had perked up a bit. "Yes, of course, we will".
The quick conversation ended, and I heard her getting out of bed so I got up and went back to my room. I tried my best to look like I had just been woken by the phone.
She came in my room expecting me to be asleep still. She was crying when she told me they had a heart for me, so we had to get our things together now and head to the hospital. We had time for a quick embrace before it all started.
I went into a daze. I was feeling every single emotion possible all at once and my brain simply shut down. I was a zombie.
Fear, impossible debilitating fear was the first emotion I remember feeling. I was going to die. There is no freaking way they can just take out my heart and I'll survive. I'll be a different person. I'll have ugly scars. My boobs! I have to ask the doctor if my boobs will be maimed in the process. I have to stay strong so I don't freak out my mom. I can't look at her. I can't look at anyone. I have to stay strong. If I die, oh well. Oh no, I don't want to die. I'm only 11 years old! Why is this happening to me? Why can't this all just be a dream? Why can't I wake up?!

This went on in my head the whole time we got ready, which wasn't very involved. We had already packed bags and they were already by the door. We only had to wake up my sister, put on clothes and drive away from my house. I ripped up the goodbye letters I had written my family, and tossed them under my bed before we got in the car. Scott, my mother's boyfriend, was there and actually was the one who drove the hour to the hospital.

At this point, I was numb. I was feeling overwhelmed. I was anxious to get to the hospital, what if we were late? Why wasn't he speeding (which he probably was)? Weaving in and out of traffic? My mom tried to distract me by having me call family and tell them. I called my Dad, and he said he and Amy (momma)were on their way. My grandma and grandpa, aunts uncles cousins friends were all called and on their way as soon as they could leave.

When Scott stopped to get gas I found myself feeling annoyed and irritated, but unable to express anything except being obviously dumbfounded. The people on their way to work or going home after partying at 3 in the morning had no idea. They had no clue that I could be a few hours from dying. They had no idea that I was going to have my heart removed from my body. They didn't know, and they weren't affected by the outcome. Life lessons.

I stared straight ahead the rest of the trip. I stared straight ahead as we pulled up to the hospital and I stared straight ahead as my mom helped me into a wheelchair and as Scott pushed me the old familiar way to the children's floor.
We got to the floor, and apparently we were the only ones in a hurry. No one was there to greet us, and we had to walk up to the nurses station to remind them what we were there for.
I got the worst nurse of all time. I've blocked out that bitch's name from my memory. Grrrr.
She was an old lady, probably in her mid 60's. She had a limp when she walked, like her hip was higher on one side. And her voice was high pitched and grating. She took pleasure in making patient's lives harder. She liked to torture us. Me and Sidney used to make fun of her behind her back, and we dreaded when she was assigned to us.
Anyway, I didn't care. I was actually nice to her, even though she was being a wench and asking my mom why she was crying. "It's fine, she's getting a heart, you should be happy". My mom wanted to punch her. She didn't.
The doctor's finally came in an hour later. They informed us that the brain dead donor's family had just pulled the plug a few hours away. The heart had to be harvested and examined, then confirmed and flown to us. This would all take a while, so I should try to get some rest.

My family sat with me while I was changed into a hospital gown (prom dress!) and I started to calm down a bit. I had a little more time to compose myself instead of being thrown into surgery like I had imagined it would be.
A couple hours passed, and I was actually conversing with my sister. We didn't talk about my health, just about school or friends or whatever...I was avoiding the issue.
At 8:00 in the morning, I had the first round of immunosuppressants shoved down my throat...literally. They handed me a cup full of the nasty little skunk-smelling gray liquid gel caps. It was Cyclosporine
And nurse horrorpants was there to make sure I took every pill, her favorite game. She sat in front of me like I was a baby, and every pill I ate, she made me stick out my tongue. I was humiliated and sickened. I downed what must have been 20 of the nasty things before I started feeling nauseous. I needed to puke, but the nurse wouldn't let me move. I finally had to physically push her out of the way to get to the toilet in time to puke up all the pills I had just taken. Doctors started coming in, and they said the heart was en route to us.
"See, you have to take these, there's not much time left" the nurse pressured me. She was acting like I was doing it on purpose!
"You'll have to take these everyday for the rest of your life after you get out of surgery, and you can't puke them up then!"
The same thing happened 3 more times and I was getting exhausted. Swallowing all the pills, puking. Swallowing all the pills, puking, Swallowing all...the pills...puking.
Finally a doctor suggested giving me the oral solution and though it was gross, it worked and I didn't puke it up. My immune system would start shutting down in anticipation of the new heart.

I fell asleep for a short time. It couldn't have been more than a half hour before I was woken up. "We're moving you up to the surgery waiting room".

I got into a bed and my family followed me in the elevator to the 6th floor. I was rolled into a large room that had beds lining it. Only curtains separated the beds. There was a man asleep across the room from me, and a lady a few beds down to my right. They were waiting for some kind of surgery, too.

At this point they must have given me some kind of medicine to make me relax. I was pretty loopy. I joked around with the nurses, and my family tried to keep me calm. I felt anxious and started shaking badly. The doctor told me it was the immunosuppressants kicking in. I was worried about how it would be taking this medicine everyday for the rest of my life. If I lived.

My surgeon came out to meet us, and it was the first time I'd ever seen him. I explained to him that I was worried about my first time with general anesthesia, I didn't want it to be like in the movies when they told you it was just oxygen and then you wake up 3 hours later. I shared with him my fear of the last thing I might ever hear in my life being a lie. "Tell me honestly what you're doing, when you're doing it please." He agreed.

It was time.
I was so anxious. I can feel it now. I was overwhelmed and anxious and I could feel everyone else's anxiety, too. I experienced everyone's fears as strongly as my own. I was overcome by it all. I went numb again. My mom started crying, and she took my stuffed duck from my bed as they put the blue stretchy hat over my hair. The nurse made some joke about how it was the newest fashion statement and gestured to her own hat as a sign of solidarity. She was nice.
I assured and reassured my mother as she started freaking out. At the entrance to the surgery hallway, she kissed my head and we said I love you. As the doors swung shut, I heard her yelling at Scott and saw him grab her around the waist.

I was completely alone now.

Alone as I was wheeled down the metal hallway. Everything was stainless steel and white. It was freezing cold and smelled like rubbing alcohol.
The bed hit the two swinging doors into the surgery suite. It was blindingly bright. There must have been 20 people in the room. Nurses, doctors, techs.
There was a table in the middle of the room and I had to scoot across to it from my bed. It was hard metal and cold. A nurse came up to me and bent over my head. She told me to turn to the table on the right. She gestured at a red and white drink cooler. "Your new heart is in that cooler!" and smiled. I was disgusted, I think. I smiled, but what I noticed more than the cooler with a dead girl's fresh heart in it, was the array of scary looking medical equipment. There were hundreds, hundreds, of tongs, scalpels, saws, scissors, pans, tubes, catheters and a chest separator that really freaked me out.
And this:


I was pretty spooked. All of a sudden people started going really fast. Everyone was rushing around, and it did nothing to help me feel any calmer. No one was talking to me, and one guy kept asking why I was still awake, which made me feel completely invisible. The same guy took my clothes off without looking at my face. I was a body to him. Just a body that he had gone to school to fix. Like a mechanic and a broken car.

He was rough as he tugged at my arms, and I was looking somewhere else entirely when I felt a sharp stick in my left wrist. I didn't jerk my hand away luckily for him, but he gave me no warning and I felt myself getting scared and I started to cry. He didn't acknowledge me, and said "we need to get her asleep asap". The vein blew and he apologized and said he'd wait to do it again when I was asleep.
I was completely naked in front of all the people in the room when they started scrubbing my chest with orange stinky betadine cleanser/disinfectant.
"We're going to give you some medicine now that will make you feel calmer" I heard from...somewhere. I felt myself getting calmer, though.

They strapped my legs and arms down with restraints, and I asked my doctor to come over to me. I asked him to come down so I could speak to him in private, and took that opportunity to ask him if my boobs would be affected. Hahaha...he laughed but assured me I would be okay, and he would not mess up my breasts.

Then they tried to put the oxygen mask on me, but I turned my head away from it. I told them again that I didn't want the medicine without warning. They agreed, and the mask was put on my face. There was no warning, and I felt myself slipping...somewhere between sleep and death. It was 12:00pm on June 30th, 1999 when I died the first time. And it would be that same day when I was reborn.

Whew. That was a long one.

stop talking... that hole is getting huge.

As a beginning side note, I went to the first show I've been to in a while. I had to go, it was THOU, a really good doom band. I had been planning to go for a month, and hadn't been planning to be in the hospital... so fatigue be damned.
Anyway. I made some observations.
I am soooo over the "punk scene". I'd realized this before, but now it's pretty cemented in my existence. It's so stupid and pointless. The same exact conversations night after night about "punk stuff" like what cool shit you dumpster dived, what misdemeanor crime you got away with, what band you partied with last night. How wasted you were.
It's annoyingly repetitive. I tried to remember how I was when I identified with all the people I saw tonight but I just can't. It seems like a lifetime ago, it feels like I'm an entirely different person.
How can so many people have so few goals or aspirations in life?

ANYWAY OFF THE SOAPBOX.


I left off with my first encounter with Sidney. Ah yes...

After that first official meeting, we became inseparable. I felt like a kid again. I was up walking around, and since she and I were the only children who weren't bedridden or infants, we had full reign over the entire children's floor. It was a bit creepy because only about 10 rooms were actually in use.
It was an entire floor of winding hallways decorated with 80's style disney characters. Mickey mouse ran along the floor board flying a kite and a flaky Minnie ate a picnic under a tree with a faded Donald Duck. The whole back part was completely abandoned, but with plastic blocking it off.

One day, we wandered past our usual haunt, the "teen lounge" (which consisted of a shitty pool table, chalkboard walls, and a computer with internet access), and through the plastic. It was a child's dream world.
A whole nurses station with a broken computer, and office chairs. There were tons of wheelchairs, and beds in all the old rooms. We ran back to our rooms and grabbed all our stuffed animals.
I don't recall which ones she had, but I brought a plush Winnie the Pooh, a duck I called "quack-quack" and a couple bears I had acquired over the course of my long stay. The nurses who loved us lent two clipboards, some paper, pens, and two lab coats. On our way back to the playground, we stopped at a cart and sneaked out medical supplies. We played doctor for hours, sitting at the nurses station filling out fake paperwork, ordering medicine, and treating our patients.
It was through our game that I learned Sidney had Cystic Fibrosis, a fatal hereditary disease with no cure. She'd been dealing with it since birth, and would need a lung transplant eventually. Even then, her disease would attack the new organs.
At that nurses station, Sidney 13 years old, and I 11 years old, talked about our deaths. She believed that she would live as long as she was meant to, and that she would probably die of getting hit by a bus, knowing her luck. I was still skeptical, but quick to adapt her upbeat way of thinking. It wasn't scary if I looked at it like that. All our animals had IV's and were sleeping when we started re-arranging the rooms. I was so oblivious that I didn't feel a thing when my nurse came running into the room. She looked at me with surprise and sat down to catch her breath.
"You need to come rest for a while, your heart rate is up to 185 beats a minute!"
I didn't even feel a thing.

The days flew by. We visited the intricate glassed-in doll houses in the upstairs hallway, and rode the elevators to every floor over and over again. One night Sidney and I had a sleepover. I bunked in the empty second bed in her room and we rented the movie "Arachnophobia" from the hospital library. We were scared shitless! It didn't help that there was a thunderstorm outside, and Sidney had told me earlier that the windows across the courtyard from us was where they kept the criminals. We had seen a man in cuffs and an orange jumpsuit earlier that day, and it seemed plausible. We took turns peeking out the blinds to try and see a criminal in bed.

The day I went home was very incredibly bittersweet. I wanted to leave, but I wanted to stay more. The place had become comfortable to me. The doctors knew me, the nurses loved me, and I had made a very good friend. I was scared about what was going to happen when I got to my house. Afraid of the hordes of people, questions, and expectations.

We said a short goodbye, hugged, and gave each other a present. She gave me a junk toy from the treasure chest (for when you do well in the treatment room), and I gave her a drawing of some fireworks. I finally left the hospital.

I never saw her or heard from her again. There is a small bit of footage of her from a day in the hospital when my mom gave me her video camera, but it's less than a minute, and its from behind so all you can see is her long thick blonde hair.

It's as if she was meant to meet me at that time. As if she knew what she was doing by being my friend. I asked about her in the years to come, but no one ever knew who I was talking about. It was as if she never existed.

HOME.

Take a picture it lasts longer.

My eyes are bloodshot from crying. Tonight has not proven to be as good as I'd hoped. What's the deal? I'm out of the hospital, I feel tired but otherwise relatively fine.
I got chocolate.
It's my anniversary of my heart and I'm feeling super disoriented, so if you'll excuse me I must tend to my brain before it dies completely. or explodes.