Repairing Idenity

The Awakening

The worst part is no one asks you how it changes you.  The best part is why it changes you.  Do this, peer into your life’s most pivotal moments.  Only you, can see time slow to the speed your life sways.  No one can feel the gravity lessen while you are stationed motionless inside of those moments.  No one can hear the thousands of questions you repeat in your mind.  No one can join, from any distance, to watch your world sway as you do.  No one will peer as deeply into your soul the way you will.  Find a moment where your life uncontrollably hit pause.  Did it change you?  Did no one understand?  Take it from me, no one asks you how you are reborn after surviving death, but I will ask you.  How would waking up from being pieced back together and nearly dying affect you?  I have asked myself that question repeatedly since the moment my eyes opened.  My most pivotal chapters were led by that question's answer.   I will give you fair warning that no words will ever do the irreplaceable awakening any justice.  No famous quotes can sum it up, and no apologies for what you endured will make the nightmares go away.  So, you will do what only you can do.  You hold onto it, and it stirs embers inside of you.
Embers reside in each of us.  They are waiting to be stirred by moments unknown or unlived.  They are that spark of faith you feel in fleeting moments of excitement.  They are rocks unturned in the river of your soul.  They smolder regardless of your past sin.  They wait, cautious of igniting at the wrong moment.  They fear compression but they welcome darkness.  I urge you to remember when you have felt your embers stirred.  I hope you see them glowing as I saw mine, but it is okay if you do not.  That is what I wish to leave with you so that when the time comes you can be reborn into the person you were meant to be.   I would never wish a near death experience on anyone.  Although I admit the closeness to the end granted sight I can no longer contain.  It revealed vision made possible by chance and made public by choice.  I am here to tell you my story on how I ignited my embers, and how you can too.  It is time we all finally sit in the driver’s seat, holding the key to our life’s ignition.
When I nearly died for the 2nd time, I was 27, married for almost a decade, a successful manager in my field, raising two beautiful healthy children.  Everything looked perfect on the surface.  Under the surface I was a mess.  They call it anxiety, but I call it the Anxiety Bus. It is what’s chasing you down, and no matter what you do it is always getting closer to compressing you.  In my 20’s, I never understood where my nerves, fears, and confusion came from. Combine that with no idea how to convey what I felt, thought, or my opinions, and you have a wild anxiety cocktail.  Maybe you are familiar with the feeling?  I spent three decades not understanding my emotions which would trigger the anxiety bus daily.  Today, my flame is so intense that once I am requested to express myself you cannot look away.  Like a moth to a flame, if I open up, there is no chance of compressing the flames you will inevitably greet.  However, I did find strength in silence.  I learned that by letting your flame shine, it can be louder than any verbal explanation you could confidently convey.  Taking back control of your flame is where we will start.
I awoke a new person on December 18th, 2015 to the sound of beeping.  Then I heard my sister speaking to a nurse and my anesthesiologist, and I felt hands all over my body.  Upon opening my eyes I saw the bright ceiling light which I remembered seeing before I was taken into the operating room.  It was rectangular and had a baby blue sky with white puffy clouds on it.  This sight threw me into the strongest state of confusion I have ever felt.  I couldn’t help but think “Why am I back here… Did they not do the surgery?”.  Fear came over me.  I could not move my legs under the warm beige hospital blankets.  I could hear my heart beating as my breathing sped up.  My chest raised and fell sending pain throughout my body, and the anxiety bus revved its engine.  The voices faded in and out, and my eyes refused to focus.  My left arm finally reacted to my urgent desire to get out of there.  As I rushed to grab whatever was tapped to my neck.  My sister’s face became clear above me, and her voice was reassuring.  Her hands gently grabbed mine and placed it back down at my side.  I almost pulled the bandage from a blood transfusion IV off my neck.  They had done the surgery, but it did not go as planned.
They gave me a 10-minute crash course on what happened.  Then they wheeled me to the cold dark hole they call the ICU.  I spent 5 days in the hospital.  I listened to grown men cry for help.  I cried while children screamed when doctors walked into their rooms.  I watched nurses’ shifts change over and over again, and never heard them complain about anything.  I was alone most of the time and would stare at the wall or the ceiling going over everything that brought me to that room.  Replaying it brought on questions my nurses could not answer.  I ate broth for 3 days, and although I begged, my angel of a nurse would not sneak me anything else.  She did change my bandage for me daily, which was the only time I could see the damage that had been done.  The pain was worse than childbirth.  I went home December 23rd, 2015 just in time to host Christmas from my couch.
There was no accident, I did not elect for this surgery, and I was not sick. I was healthy, and strong.  The mistake that lead me to this life changing occurrence happened 5 years before in 2010.  I had just had my second child.  A baby boy joined my family alongside his older sister, and I decided to not have any more children.  I was only 22, and my doctor laughed at me when I requested my tubes tied.  I had to wait till I was 26 to request that again.  So, in the meantime she recommended the Mirena IUD.  She sold it as a gift from God himself, not literally, but that is how it felt.  She made me worry free and excited about it.  My son was only a few weeks old when I got it inserted, and I was still breast feeding at the time.  You guys!  Uterus’s are so strong!  Mine was still healing from a natural childbirth, and by simply protecting itself, it pushed that IUD out of the uterine wall within 3 months of having it inserted.  Yes, the IUD perforated my uterus and remained in my abdomen for 5 years. I had 4 ultrasounds to look for it, and not once did they see it. A nurse in 2012 said to me at one point “It must have fell out, and you didn’t notice”. I remember thinking, “Oh, she is probably right”.  Clearly it had not fallen out.  It was embedded in my intestines covered in scar tissue by the time my surgery was scheduled 5 years later.
The laparoscopy to remove the IUD was supposed to take 1 hour and I was supposed to go home that same day.  Randomly my gynecologist was also a surgeon.  At the time it seemed like I was meant to be with her.  There were a total of 2 doctors in my county trained to remove the IUD in this type of rare situation, and she happened to be one of them.  Odd right?  So, my walls came down and I let her tell me what was going to happen.  She was booked up so far in advance that I ended up waiting 4 months for my surgery date.  It was during that time that I did what anyone would do.  I googled it.  I found enough horror stories on my condition that I requested another surgeon familiar with the GI tract be present, and she agreed.  Little did I know then that I had just saved my own life by speaking up for myself.
On the day of my surgery, my nurse wheeled me into a cold, bright operating room.  In the far corner a woman was counting and organizing the shiny surgical tools.  A man was there to help move me onto the table, and when my anesthesiologist touched my forehead I immediately panicked.  Prior to this moment I had just spent 3 hours waiting for them to come get me from a waiting area with my family.  I read a pamphlet there on how you can donate blood to yourself.  The last thing I said before he pumped me full of those nigh-night meds was “I wish I had known I could give blood to myself”.  My nurses face is the last thing I remember, and she was frozen, shocked by my comment. 
What I know about what happened to me while I was under anesthesia comes from what I was told and my medical records. When they began filling my abdomen with gas so that they could move their tools around to get the IUD they punctured something, and I began to bleed slowly, at first.  They did not stop looking for the IUD at this point.  My “gyno-surgeon” kept going.  Once there was enough bleeding that my condition was no longer safe. My hero trauma surgeon took over. First, by opening a small 4 inch incision, and later adding an additional 3 inches.  From 1 1/2 inches above my belly button down I was opened a full 7 inches. They found that their tool cut my Inferior Vena Cava. That is a vein that turns into an artery in your heart.  He had to use 4 surgical clamps to close the vein.  Then spend 1 full hour just watching it to make sure it was holding.  He told me that opening me up twice would have been too dangerous.  This angel of a surgeon held my vein in his hands for an hour, and made sure it was safe to put me back together.  They did not forget to grab my IUD on the way out by the way.  It was surrounded by scar tissue so it had to be cut in half to be removed safely.  This trauma surgeon deserves some spotlight. He spent an extra 15 minutes fixing my belly button piercing that he had to cut through.  Then he did not sew me up with stitches the old fashion way.  I was young, and he knew a way to help avoid a large scar with surgical glue and a piece of yellow sticky gauze. He took it upon himself to preserve the youth I had left. His thoughtfulness and care I will always cherish.
Like I said, this was the 2nd time I nearly died. The first one I will get to later on, but for now you should know that sometimes our personal rock bottom isn’t enough to shake our embers free. Some of us will have to be reminded more than once that our life’s trajectory is aimed toward failure. If you are lucky enough to notice at the first or first few opportunities the better. Noticing is actually half the battle. We live on survival mode which unknowingly creates a path toward our own mental health downfall. Survival mode creates blind spots in our present.
So why would anyone benefit from a story like mine? I am not unique. Chances are you’ve faced something similar or worse than I have. However, the chances that you’ve taken back control of your embers and put your own awakening to use is lower than I'd like it to be.