And you find yourself in the hospital for something that you caused 100% of yourself you feel a little bit foolish. Especially in ICU. It’s not a terribly comfortable place. It’s where they put you and you have to be monitored 24/7. You have electrodes stuck to your head. In blood work every two or three hours.

They were also rationing my water so I didn’t have any water for days and days and days. It felt a little bit like torture. But being in the ICU it was a way to get me monitored as frequently as I needed to be monitored to make sure that I was getting well.

When they move me to a regular care floor that’s when the real pain and suffering began. I was on the floor where there was a constant gonging sound in the air from patients and their monitors. It felt like something that you exposed prisoners to in the war. It scrambled my brains just listening to this constant gonging. Every now and then it would stop but then it would start up again. You couldn’t think. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t really do anything to get away from it.

I just used to listen to my sleep stories and my sleep music in the hopes that I would be able to find a wink or two of sleep here and there. But i never got any sleep the whole time I was there. I haven’t had much sleep at all to be honest since I’ve been home. I’m not sure what’s keeping me from sleeping but whatever it is it’s persistent. Sleep continues to elude me.

In the hospital however, it was even worse. I was by myself and in the same position in the bed for days on end because the nurses were so busy with their 16 or 18 patients on the floor it wasn’t the same as being in the ICU where I had full time attention.

I couldn’t really expect anybody to come visit me in that environment so I kind of just had to tough it out. And that’s exactly what i did. I think I wrote something recently about learning to live with discomfort. I think that was my post in November. This was a real test of that notion. I did my best I worked with what was happening in my mind. I used the tools that i acquired through psychotherapy. But nothing really helped other than hoping and praying that I would get out of there anytime soon.

Every day I thought I was going home and I wasn’t. I had a roommate in the hospital who had esophagus issues. She was able to walk around freely but she was attached to an IV pole for her medicine for her stomach. Her name was Kim she was very helpful to me but I couldn’t help but envy her which is kind of sick when you think about it. She was truly very very ill. It’s amazing that you can be jealous of somebody just because they have two legs that work when they’re sick as a dog and in the hospital for just as long or longer than you are. We exchanged numbers when I left the hospital and exchanged texts once or twice but we haven’t talked since I’ve been home a couple of days. I think she was going home two days after I went home but I’m not positive and all I could think about was her in that hospital bed with the constant gonging and the constant wishing for help that never came.

No matter how hard it is for me right now to resist drinking the water I’m resisting it because going back into that environment would be unthinkable for me. I will do anything to avoid that even if it means that I  have to be as uncomfortable as I am right now not drinking anything not quenching my thirst not allowing my throat to be clear not getting all the benefits that I get from drinking all the water that I drink. Like I said I’m willing to do anything.

The doctors in the hospital were very clear with me about what had to be done when I got home. Even when I got home and called one of the doctors about the number of litres of water they told me I was allowed to have he was also very clear with me that 2 to 3 liters of water was more than enough for any human to live on and I didn’t need to feel like I was depriving myself I was actually fine. Even though I don’t feel fine that’s what I’m trying to stick to and it’s truly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. And as soon as I type that I want to laugh and say not drinking water is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life? That’s amazing to me it’s like I’m an alcoholic but my drink of choice is water. Who would have thought that was possible?

Now I’m home and I’m still suffering from constant pain and discomfort in my body from having to sit in the same position in my chair for hours on end. I have to constantly obsess about the craziest things that have to do with my physical well-being like how often I go to the bathroom or how often I eat or how often I allow myself to bust open a new bottle of water. I’m trying to find a way to build a life worth living but that involves some pretty serious hard work in psychotherapy which really isn’t very fun.

My therapist explained to me that the work that we’re doing was going to be difficult and was going to make therapy harder for me than it’s ever been before. She explained that I would often not come out of therapy feeling any better than I went in in sometimes I would come out of therapy feeling worse than when I went in. This is not what i’m used to and it’s not what i want out of therapy but it’s the work that needs to be done. My therapist also explained that when we go through this process that she’s likely not going to be my favorite person and that I’m not going to want to talk to her every week I’m going to be tempted to cancel therapy so that I don’t have to deal with the pain and suffering that comes with focusing on these problems. But I assured her I’m committed to working this through. The alternative is not even something I’m willing to consider.

I’m still suffering as well from trying to figure out what to do with my time period this post is my first post where I’m actually working with a dictation app that’s allowing me to talk as opposed to type. It’s a very hard way for me to type a post because it’s not the way I’m used to working. I’m used to my words coming out of my fingers not coming out of my mouth so if this post seems a little bit disjointed that might be why. I’m talking and not typing. I’m going to have to go through and edit this and make sure that it makes sense it just doesn’t sound like a fun way to work to me. But it is the only way that I can write. Writing is what I do so I have to figure it out and that’s what I’m doing. I’m focusing on doing what I can and not ignoring the fact that there is a way for me to write it’s just not what I’m used to.

It’s funny when I talk to people about what I’m doing to try to stay together and to try to build a life worth living I get a lot of people telling me how proud they are of me and what the work that I’m doing is because it’s so difficult that a lot of people just wouldn’t try but i explained to them immediately to me there is no option. The option is to just pretend that I’m going to get better suddenly for no reason. That I’m just going to suddenly feel OK after a certain amount of time goes by. And I know that that’s not the case I know I have to do the work.

So I don’t want people to tell me that they’re proud of me because I’m not proud of me. I’m struggling openly. Struggling shouldn’t be something that you get bonus points for. But in this world those of us who are stricken with an illness or a malady of some kind are expected to struggle for bonus points. And that’s where I find myself right now.