This is my life…

…lying in bed, unable to sleep. No exception tonight; I tossed and turned in my dark and a little too warm room, not unusual for an April night in Tucson. My fiancé snored, oblivious, next to me. I barely noticed the noise anymore, except when he stop breathing for a second and then snorted like an overjoyed pig.

My small bedroom felt even smaller at night, the air stale; the air conditioning was cranked down low but it never worked very well in my apartment. A leftover hint of vanilla hung in the air from the candles I religiously lit every night. I was known by my family for having an inhumanly good sense of smell, so I burned candles to make the air pleasant. I could barely detect the smell of fabric softener, so I knew it had been too long since the sheets were washed. I’ll wash them tomorrow after work I mused, staring at the ceiling. This was my life… at this point men had come and gone from my life believing they were much more special than they were.... I was trying on something new. He still didn't fit. This was my life? Like I was a female version of Prufrock in Eliot's poem.

I could never settle my mind at night. Thoughts always wandered. As I laid there I heard Sedona, my two-year-old dog named after the town that shared her fur’s reddish hue, rustle in her kennel. She is the cutest and most bizarre mutt I had ever laid eyes on, a mind-boggling DNA verified mix of Akita and Jack Russell Terrier. She had been a difficult puppy, and even now, her kennel is pulled away from the wall so she wouldn’t eat, well, the wall.

The alarm clock on my nightstand glows red, the only light in the room. I keep the wooden shutters on the window closed to block out the dim orange lighting of the parking lot outside. Light makes it even harder for me to sleep. Every night for me is long. Despite the warmth, I couldn’t just sleep with a sheet - I needed blankets to provide me with a sense of security. It didn’t help with getting comfortable, but I had always been that way. Everything about my nights had been normal. So far.

Abnormally, on the other hand, work today had been good. I’d spent part of it bullshitting with my friend and co-worker Danielle. I got my reports done. I even left on time. Weird. Work had been nothing but stress for some time. To have a decent day working at the Department of Child Services is out of the ordinary. It left me with high expectations for the next day - I was on top of my work, I would not need to go in at the crack of dawn, I could be on pace for once. I felt relieved in that sense.

After the fifteen minute commute home from the office, another unusual thing as many nights I came from far afield elsewhere in town, I got home and cooked dinner for my sons, the loves of my life. Spaghetti with meat sauce, one of their favorites. It is a rare pleasure these days to be able to cook for them. My hours at work usually kept me out too late to do that. Typically I brought something home or had something steeping in the crock pot if my schedule foreshadowed a bad day; better known as a typical day, really. Or, if the day would be impossible, there was always frozen lasagna, usually reserved for nights I was going to get home after their bed time. Having the chance to slow down and do something for my children always made me happy.

I sat at the dining table, a high top bistro type with four chairs; two for my boys, and the other two for me and my then fiancé Jack. Family nights, like my chance to cook dinner, came and went fleetingly so I took it in while I could.

It being a school night, my two boys got ready for bed. Jack is lying in bed, on his phone, as he usually did when he spent the night. He was never much for company; stuck behind the bluish glow of his phone screen. I decided to take advantage of my good mood, my low stress day at work, and getting home early to try and catch up on rest. I started my nighttime routine; got in the shower, brushed my teeth, lotioned myself up and got into bed.

Nearly my entire life, I have suffered from insomnia. A holdover from my childhood where nighttime was a terrible time; where sleep was a vulnerability not worth risking. Tonight proved no different; comfort did not come easily. I laid in bed tossing, turning, wishing to be asleep, while simultaneously over-analyzing every aspect of my life. Jack laid there, a log next to me, still snoring. I figured this would be the theme for the night.

Then it happened. Pain. Awful, searing pain, rising out of nowhere like a sparked gasoline fire. It hit me like a bullet wound, bursting a hole in my right side just above my hip bone. I cried out with agony as pain radiated up into my rib cage. My body folded in half, writhing in pain. Jack continued to lay there like a log, snoring.

Ten minutes or more passed as I tried to wait out the pain. Tears flowed; I cried from the tortuous, stabbing agony.

“Uhh....humm...what’s wrong?” Jack mumbled, barely conscious. In my agony, I tried and failed to explain what I was experiencing.

“I'm in awful pain,” I managed to push out past it all.

Still not awake, he didn’t respond, so I told him I was going to sit in a hot bath to see if that helped. I got out of bed and walked to the bathroom across the hall. My kids had the master bedroom; I made sure they always had the most space I could afford as a single mother. While making the short walk I immediately noticed something worrisome - I couldn’t stand up straight. I tried, but my body would tremble and the pain went from agonizing to excruciating, so I held onto the walls to get across the hall to the bathroom.

I managed to make it to the bathtub despite it all and started filling the tub before struggling out of my tank top and shorts. Dipping into the scalding hot water was usually a relief for my aches and pains. I’d suffered from unexplained abdominal pain before and knew many tricks to make it subside, but even after lying still and soaking for some time, I was still in just as much pain. It didn’t help at all - very distressing. After ten minutes I realizing something more needed to be done.

I crawled, quite literally, out of the bathtub and onto the floor. The vinyl tile under my hands is cold. Trembling, I reached up and pulled the towel off the rack. I felt woozy, but thought it was from the heat of the bath. I wrapped the towel around my body the best I could and crawled on my hands and knees back into my bedroom. I didn’t want to wake up the kids and scare them so I didn’t call out to Jack for help.

I finally reached the bedroom and yelled at Jack to get up. He was disoriented but I didn’t mince words.

“I need to go to the hospital.”

He was obviously confused. “Why?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes.

“Fuck...my stomach. Oh my god, help!”

Fighting through the pain and dizziness I managed to pull open a dresser drawer and struggle into some underwear and a loose-fitting nightgown. I felt so very woozy, but managed to stand, hunched over. In hindsight, standing was not a good idea; the floor seemed to move out from under me and I fell. It all seemed to happen very slowly, but eventually the light faded from the outside of my vision inward until it went black.

...

I wasn’t out for long. I woke up in Jack’s arms as he sprinted to his Jeep parked right in front of my apartment door. My children, sixteen and twelve and still asleep, were unaware of the ordeal so he locked the door behind us and drove me to Tucson Medical Center just a few miles away.

Riding in the Jeep that night was agonizing. Jack drove fast and I felt every jarring bump due to the off-road suspension. Pain shot through my abdomen and I cried and groaned with pain.. “It hurts. I’m in pain. It hurts,” I kept telling him.

“I’m trying to get you there as quickly as I can,” he replied, pulling up to the emergency room.

I couldn’t walk, so Jack carried me in like an infant and, scared for my well-being, tried to get me help immediately. A nurse at the reception window rolled out with a wheelchair.

“You can set her down in this,” she said, covering me with a blanket.

I could only sit hunched over. Trying to sit up straight caused explosive pain. I cried and squirmed. Only a few minutes passed before a nurse rolled me and my chair back to triage and asked about my symptoms. My voice shook as I spoke through my tears, but I told them about the pain and trembling, the dizziness, and that I had fainted.

Then came the barrage of the usual litany of questions: are you pregnant? Do you smoke? Do you use drugs? After answering a lot of “no’s” they took my vitals which were, somehow, completely normal. Perhaps because of this, they sent me back out to the waiting room. They told me they’d bring me back as soon as a room was available.

Jack sat with me but said nothing; he didn't even try to comfort me even though I was slumped over in the wheelchair, crying quietly. All I wanted in the whole world was for the pain to stop. So badly.

The waiting room at TMC is usually very busy, but tonight it was worse than usual. Packed, in fact. Despite my agony, I couldn’t avoid noticing that everyone’s eyes were on me. In a wheelchair in my nightgown, bent over in pain. I felt humiliated. The pain seemed to lessen over time and then I had an overwhelming desire to sleep. Despite my tendency for insomnia, I just couldn’t stay awake. If my mind had been clear, I would have realized how unusual and even worrisome this was.

...

Four hours went by. A pale and petite red-haired nurse in her forties came through the ED double doors and called my name. Jack pushed my chair as we followed the nurse to my assigned room. Everything seemed fuzzy and covered in a haze of light static, as if I was watching this on an old television with a poorly adjusted antenna. Once in the room I got into bed with the help of Jack and the nurse. While it better than the wheelchair, I could only get comfortable in the fetal position. At least with the curtain between beds I had some privacy, finally, and felt some sense of relief.

The nurse let me know, then, that the doctor would be by to see me as soon as possible but in the meantime I needed an MRI. By now the clock had swung well past midnight. If I stayed in the right position the pain diminished and I could actually sleep. With that, during one of my waking moments, I told Jack to head home to help my boys get ready for school. I felt like everything was going to be okay and I could handle whatever came next on my own.

A few minutes after he left, the nurse came in and gave me pain medication. I didn’t even notice, really, comfortable with my new friend, the fetal position, although it was easier to stay asleep with the help of the morphine. Transportation arrived shortly thereafter; they wheeled my bed to the imaging center of the hospital for my MRI.

Hospital staff transferred me to the MRI table and the techs asked me to lay straight on my back, informing me that’s the position I needed to assume since that’s how MRI’s are done. I couldn't even try, so the staff decided to do it for me. What a nightmare!  As they tried pulling me into a prone position, my pain skyrocketed and I screamed and began to convulse uncontrollably. After realizing the hopelessness of their attempts the nurse gave me another full dose of morphine, but nothing helped. I simply couldn’t straighten out my body, and my mind continued to sink, more tired now than ever. Surrounded by exasperated and frustrated staff, with the exception of the sympathetic nurse, I was told that they would go ahead and do the scan with me in the fetal position. At that point, I could not have cared less.

The MRI didn’t take long, nor did the two minute ride back to my room. What seemed like five minutes later the nurse came running in.

“Wake up,” she said, slapping my cheek a little. “Who is here with you?”

“No one is here with me right now,” I said.

I don’t remember if I asked why they wanted to know, but the nurse said, “We are prepping the O.R. right now for surgery. Your abdomen is full of blood.”

“What?” I asked. What she said confused me. My mind felt very distant from my body.

She asked if I wanted to call anyone. All I remember was feeling so very tired. I wanted her to go away so I could sleep. I said as much.

“I’m tired and I want to go to sleep.”

The nurse looked at me intently. “You’re not tired. You’re dying.”

She was right. I died that night. Not once, but three times. However, death was not the end of my story. Little did I know then, death can be just the beginning.