When I woke, it was, at first, the same as any other time I\u2019d ever awakened. I faded into awareness. I could hear my best friend\u2019s voice calling to me. I opened my eyes, and she was there, hovering over my face.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi!\u201d she said, her eyes red, her voice unusually, artificially cheerful.<\/p>\n
I thought the words, but when I tried to ask her what was wrong, no sound came forth from my throat. I reached up instinctively with my hands only to discover I was bound. Cloth-covered circles around each wrist, keeping me from reaching the tube stuffed down my throat. I panicked.<\/p>\n My eyes were wide with fear. My heart was racing and beating loudly in my ears. My best friend, Lynn, was saying something, but I couldn\u2019t hear her. I tried to focus on her voice.<\/p>\n \u201cMichelle, you have to calm down. They have you on the breathing tube still, and if you want to get off of it, you have to leave it alone, and show them that you can breathe on your own.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m breathing fine, I thought. Fuck this. Get this fucking tube out. Right. Now. Now!<\/p>\n But of course, no sound. Nothing came out when I tried to talk. I calmed myself by focusing on Lynn stroking my hand. She was saying something about my mother being there and my son.<\/p>\n My son\u2026 where is he? I perked up to look for him. He\u2019s always understood me. He came over to me, put his rough hands on my strapped-down hands, and I saw the same red eyes. He\u2019d been crying. He never cries. This unnerved me in a way I can\u2019t explain.<\/p>\n \u201cI hurt,\u201d I whispered out. It wasn\u2019t clear. It barely registers. \u201cI hurt,\u201d I mouthed it more than I said it. \u201cI hurt.\u201d And my son bent down close to me and I said it again, \u201cI hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou hurt?\u201d he asked, excited he seemed to understand me.<\/p>\n I nodded enthusiastically. He told the nurse. She said, \u201cI can fix that. Just a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n And she came to the side of my ICU bed and pushed a button or two. The next thing I know, my head is fuzzy, and I drift into a relaxed state. The panic subsides a little bit. I doze off into a fitful slumber that only lasts a few minutes but feels like an eternity.<\/p>\n I\u2019m strapped into the bed. I can\u2019t breathe on my own. I can\u2019t talk or really communicate in any way. My family is all around me with red, watery eyes. I\u2019m convinced I\u2019m dying. I\u2019m ready to give in to it, too, and just go to sleep. I don\u2019t want to fight anymore. I can\u2019t breathe. My chest hurts again. My throat hurts.<\/p>\n I reach up to touch my chest and am reminded that my hands are still in restraints. \u201cHoney, you have to settle down,\u201d Lynn said. \u201cThey won\u2019t take the restraints off until you stop trying to pull the tube out. You kept trying to pull the tube out.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s no way for me to say I won\u2019t pull out the tube, but I\u2019m awake now and as much as I want the tube out, I\u2019m not going to try to do that on my own, regardless of what I tried to do while still mostly unconscious and unaware. I have no way to tell them that, though, so I just lie there, tears streaming from my face. It\u2019s the most helpless I\u2019ve ever felt, and it was very unnerving. I can\u2019t explain what it feels like to wake up and be tied down and partly drugged, a feeling of being tortured and completely out of control.<\/p>\n Fortunately, there was no real pain anywhere now that the nurse dialed something up on a machine beside me. The pain in my chest was mostly anxiety I presumed, and once I calmed down, I was able to breathe through it, and the pain subsided.<\/p>\n I start coming around a little bit more, not so groggy. But waking up with a breathing tube was not part of the plan.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll write more tomorrow, but this, for now, tells you how my surgery went. And this was the easy surgery. Wait until I talk about the one where they had me intubated for 22 hours straight while I was breathing on my own, and was in and out of consciousness. That one was sheer torture.<\/p>\n More soon. Consider this part one.<\/p>\n Love and stuff, When I woke, it was, at first, the same as any other time I\u2019d ever awakened. I faded into awareness. I could hear my best friend\u2019s voice calling to me. I opened my eyes, and she was there, hovering over my face. \u201cHi!\u201d she said, her eyes red, her voice unusually, artificially cheerful. I thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-health"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nI was still intubated. That was not<\/strong> the plan. I was not supposed to be on the breathing vent by the time I woke up. One of the risks of this surgery was that I would not be able to get off the breathing tube because of my CTEPH — chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, a rare condition that complicated my heart-valve biosynthetic replacement. I discovered I could not move my right hand, but I was unable to talk to tell anyone.<\/p>\n
\nMichy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"