I Don't Remember

I was finally out of the hospital! And it was awesome. I was constricted to a house- but hey- at least I now had 10 rooms instead of one! And I was doing pretty well. Was is the key word here. I had no idea what horrors were in store for me.

Soon my stomach began hurting. And I mean hurting badly. They hoped maybe it was just normal stomach issues and so metamucil became a part of my daily regimen. But it wasn't getting better. If I thought that my Crohn's had hurt, I had no idea what a world of pain I was about to endure. Finally, one night I looked at my mom and said,"I need to go to the hospital".

I had gotten GVHD (graft versus host disease) of the duodenum. Basically, the new fighter cells in my body were attacking my colon because there was previous damage there from the Crohn's. They told me it was likely to happen. I just didn't understand that it would be the worst, and I mean absolute worst, thing I would ever experience in my entire life.

I don't remember much of it to be honest. I was in the hospital from September to November. I remember only glimpes. I was on loads of pain medication. Tons of steroids. Tons of who knows what else. Once, I counted how many pills I took in a day. It was 42. Plus I was constantly on IV drips. I remember the doctors coming in and  trying to talk to me and see how I was doing, but I was unresponsive. I refused to talk and turned off all the lights. I literally sat awake in the darkness. My only form of communication was through my mom. Rarely, I would whisper something to her. Otherwise, she would have to guess at what I was thinking and if I didn't glare back at her, she was correct in her thinking. There was more agonizing pain. More pain meds.

I couldn't sleep. Finally, they put me on Ambien. The first dose was too high and I got up in the middle of the night and fell over a chair. I didn't even remember it happened the next morning. I woke up  with huge bruises all along the side of my body. This was especially bad because I had no platelets to clot the blood. They lowered my dose the next night.

I was still vomiting all the time. I don't think the chemo truly left my body for about a year and a half. I vomited almost every day in that time. And I was so weak. I didn't eat or get out of bed for six weeks. I couldn't because it was too painful or I was too doped up anyways.

I would only get a semi-shower once every few days which basically consisted of wash rags with soap on it while I laid in bed. I hated it because the rags would become cold so quickly. Also, it required me to move just the slightest bit which my muscles refused to do. What really stinks is that to this day I now have PTSD (well probably a milder version of it) to the soap that we used. It was a Dial vanilla brand and if I smell or see it I just start crying. Even writing this here is difficult.

I made sure either one of my parents or Mercedes were always with me. There was only one time during that whole hospital stay that they weren't. And I freaked out. I had to go to the bathroom, but I couldn't move by myself due to my muscular atrophy. My legs and arms wouldn't support me because I had wasted away in the past few weeks. I didn't want to call the nurse because they didn't know how to help me like my family did. I hated being dependent on a stranger and I was so embarrassed. But I eventually did call her to help me anyways. And when my mom returned I cried and cried and asked her never to leave me again. That was selfish. But she understood and she would do the same again.

One of the only other things I remember was a team of psychiatrists coming in to see me. A team. They told me I was depressed because I wouldn't talk to anyone, kept all of the lights off, and refused to move. I didn't say a word to them. I just took turns glaring in their general direction and then dropping my eyes to my lap in embarrassment. In retrospect, yes- I had severe depression. But at the time I was too depressed to see it. And I was too humiliated. There is a huge stigma out there for depression. One that I had back then. It's something you don't ever want to admit to. You tell yourself that you can be happy and that sometimes you even are happy. And when someone says you're depressed you get embarrassed because it feels like an attack on you. They're telling you there is something wrong with your mind. And nobody ever wants to think that there is something wrong with them. But Mercedes was the one to talk me into taking the antidepressants. She said it was worth trying and if it didn't work there was no harm done and I could stop. It's hard to argue with that logic.

But that is all I can recall. My mom says it's good I don't remember a lot of it. It's probably a defense mechanism that my brain is using. I just remember these little episodes. And some of them I didn't even recall by myself. The story of my life came up later. Someone would say "You don't remember when you fell and got so bruised all over your body?". I have one very vivid memory engrained in me from this time though: the image of the dark hospital room. I remember one morning just staring at the little window with the little streams of light coming in my room and hating that light. How could it be sunny out when everything in my life was so horrible and dark? It didn't make sense. I wanted the light shut out.