My life changed forever on a Friday night, October 18, 2019. Technically it all started a few weeks before that night, as an infection was raging through my body. I should have felt it happening and taken steps to prevent it, but I did not. It was meant to happen this way, and something positive came out of it, so I am not sure if I regret it per se or wish the blessing had come to me in a different way. Am I making sense?

Maybe I should stop using cryptic language and share what happened?

 On that Friday night, I had been sick for a few days. My back ached, I could not keep food or liquids down, my joints were sore, I had bladder spasms, unusually excessive thirst, dizzy, and I was running a fever. I had been battling the symptoms of a UTI for a few weeks. I knew the symptoms, I knew that I should see a doctor and obtain some antibiotics before I turned septic (I spent a week in the hospital in December of 2016 with sepsis,) but I did not.

 Why? The short answer is that I was bull headed. I think somewhere in that deep, dark hole in my psyche where my anxiety and depression reside, I wanted to die.

I did not have health insurance at the time, and I was deeply concerned about the cost of a doctor or urgent care visit. When I left Parallon in late 2017 and we moved to Georgia, I lost my health coverage. I went on disability in the Spring of 2018, but you must wait two years before you become eligible for Medicare. My husband and I lived on a shoestring budget and unfortunately in the summer of 2019 when he was eligible to enroll in his company’s healthcare plan, he mistakenly left me off the enrollment. We did not discover the mistake until it was past the time for changes, so they told him he could not add me until open enrollment in November for the 2020 new year. 

My agoraphobia had also overtaken my life. The thought of just using my walker to go to the kitchen for a sandwich petrified me. I had not left the apartment since we moved in December 2018.

On the night of October 18^th, I stumbled into my bathroom. After being sick for what seemed like hours, but was only a few minutes, I climbed into the shower on wobbly legs thinking a warm shower and a clean nightgown would help me feel better. After a few minutes, my wobbly legs started to give way underneath me and I called for Chuck as I grabbed my handicap bar and tried to keep from going down. My left leg crumbled underneath me as I went down, and my right leg went forward. Chuck and I tried in vain to free me and get me out of the tub, but we were unable to move me. He called 911. 

It took ten Whitfield County firefighters and rescue paramedics to extract me from the tub and drag me out of the bathroom and through my bedroom to their gurney waiting in the hall outside my bedroom door. I was not going to allow them to take me to the ER at first, but I was overruled, so they threw sheets over me to cover my nakedness. Any shred of dignity I had prior was gone as I was wheeled to the ambulance, covered only by sheets, in front of gawking neighbors, begging Chuck to grab a housedress and slippers before he followed us to the ER. I would need clothes to wear home once they released me and sent me home later that night.

Or so I thought. 

I remember the short ride to the hospital. I remember being unloaded from the ambulance; the cool October night air felt good on my hot face. The ER was busy, but I remember being wheeled into an exam room right away. I have a faint memory of a nurse trying to insert a catheter. I had hit my shoulder against the back wall of the shower, so they were going to x-ray my shoulder and leg to make sure there were no broken bones. They tried to put an oxygen mask on me, and I freaked out. The world went black.

My next memory is hazy. I was on my back, looking at a bar and some kind of chain hanging over me. I could not move and when I tried, everything hurt and a male voice chastised me, “quit fighting Ms. Bryant. We can’t help you if you fight us.” It was so hot. There were strange sounds and strange voices. I tried to take a deep breath to calm myself, but no breath came. Then it hit me…I’m dead and this is hell. 

The room was mostly dark, but there was a light coming through an opening to my right. I tried to turn my head, but it would not move. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bald man approaching, dressed in black hospital scrubs. His skin was red and all I could think was the devil was coming to get me. I shut my eyes tight and all I saw was red. I prayed; in my head my voice was screaming. 

“You can’t take me, I’m a child of God. Jesus, please help me.”  The angry red turned a comforting blue, then a bright, warm yellow. I just knew He was there with me. 

My next memory was waking up. At first, I thought she was an angel because her face sparkled slightly in the low light. Turns out it was just highlight powder. She was young, dressed in navy blue scrubs. Her dark blond/light brown hair had streaks of deep brown and light blonde. She wiped my face with a damp cloth and told me not to try to talk. I felt myself drifting back into the black nothing of sleep. 

As my semi-consciousness faded, I heard a voice say, “poor thing. She will wake up and he’ll be gone.” Another voice said, “what happened?”  The first voice replied, “he was so distraught over her, he wrecked his car when he went home.” A terror returned to my heart. They were talking about my darling Chuck. I prayed again, “Jesus, please don’t let me wake up from this nightmare. Just bring me to heaven” And then, the yellow light faded into inky black and silence.

My next memory is waking up. Really waking up. I was sitting semi-upright, a middle-aged doctor to my right, and two young nurses in scrubs to my left. My body hurt, my head pounded, my legs felt like they were in extra-large blood pressure cuffs, and as I tried to take a breath to speak, the tube in my throat felt like it scraped against the inside of my chest. Dr. Green explained they were going to take the tube out but would have to put it back if I could not breathe on my own. I nodded and it felt like an eternity until the tube came out. I took a deep breath that felt like it was filled with sand. My lips, mouth/tongue, throat, and lungs were all on fire.

After a few ragged breaths, the doctor spoke again, “You gave us a scare Ms. Bryant. You have a long road ahead of you, but the worst is over. There’s someone here who wants to see you.”  And before I knew it, there was my Chuck. I eventually found out it was October 28^th. I thought I had only been out for a couple of days when the nurse said it was Monday. Turns out I had been in a coma for ten days. I kept fighting the oxygen mask, then the ventilator, and in my stupor before the coma was induced, I tried to pull out my picc line, the IV, and my foley catheter. The bars and chains turned out to be the trapeze bar attached to my bariatric bed and the “blood pressure cuffs” on my legs were actually compression sleeves to stave off blood clots. 

The overheard conversation which had me believing Chuck was dead was about the woman in the room next to mine. The bald, red skinned, man in the black scrubs? None of my doctors, nurses or respiratory techs were bald. Although prior to becoming sick, I had been calling myself a Christian for a while, deep down I always had doubts. My experience while in the coma was a transformation. Any doubts I had about God were gone. It was my spiritual equivalent of being “scared straight.” I rededicated my life to Christ in that hospital bed.

The diagnosis was septic shock and if my kidneys had not started working after the first few days on the vent, they would have started dialysis. I was lucky. The heavy antibiotics which saved my life did damage to the muscles and tendons in my legs. Before I got sick, walking was difficult due to my arthritis and fibromyalgia; I would also become winded easily. After being in the bed for ten days, combined with the muscle damage, left me unable to walk. If I had not gone to the hospital, my undiagnosed COPD would have killed me eventually. The sepsis and my lungs were competing to see which one could kill me first.

I spent a couple more days in ICU before being transferred to what they called a “step down” unit. It was not a pleasant place. Chuck nearly cold-cocked the lung specialist when the first words out of his mouth before even examining me or discussing my new COPD diagnosis were, “I can’t do anything for you until you have weight loss surgery.” He never did listen to my lungs. I cried when the diabetic specialist came to visit. I knew what the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes meant. By that time my belly was already a sea of bruises from daily insulin and blood thinner injections. Did you know if you are fortunate enough to survive septic shock, the subsequent restarting of vital organs changes your body’s physiology?

After two tense days of being treated like a burden and over hearing some very hurtful and unprofessional comments from the nurse technicians, I was finally transferred to the bariatric ward. Treatment there was like a breath of fresh air. I nearly got myself transferred to the psych ward when I answered a nurse who asked if I needed anything, “a gun so I can shoot myself.” Chuck wanted to box my ears. And although they did not transfer me, I did have a few visits from a staff psychiatrist and my day nurse searched my room everyday for several days to ensure no one was bringing me anything I could hurt myself with. 

I spent all of November, December, and the first week of January in that room. I learned to ride the Hoyer lift like it was second nature. If I could have walked, they would have sent me home in late November when my secondary bout of pneumonia (side effect of being intubated, as were the lovely blisters around my mouth from the tubing and masks) finally cleared up. The doctors kept suggesting rehab facilities, but since I was not insured none would take me. I continued to do my occupational and physical therapy every day. OT was successful…I learned to shower sitting down, comb my hair, brush my teeth, wash my face, and use my damaged left arm. By the beginning of December, I had managed to ween myself off supplemental O2; though I still had to wear the bi-pap at night. My pressure wounds, which begun in ICU but opened up in the step-down unit, were finally healing as well.

I was starting to be able to stand for a few moments at a time. I was unsteady, it hurt, but my anxiety was my worst enemy. Mid-December brought what they thought was the flu until the swabs came back negative. I ran a fever, could not hold food down, my sense of taste was gone, my sinuses and lungs filled up with yuck, and my joints ached. Docs said it was a virus, but not flu. This was two months before the country locked down due to coronavirus and to this day, I have this crazy idea that I might have caught an early strain. Ironically, I caught it from one of my nurses. I had to go back on supplemental O2, they added anti-viral medication and an antibiotic (to prevent a secondary infection) to my twice daily cocktail of medications which by this time included medicines for nerve pain, COPD, high blood pressure, diabetes, kidney function, every vitamin supplement under the sun, and anxiety and depression.

I eventually got over the unknown viral infection, but it was not until after I went to a physical rehab center in early January. But that is another memory for another day. 

So, you see, Jesus saved me for a reason. Not once, but several times. I have been back to the hospital since coming home from rehab in late February of 2020. A week after I was home the nation’s nursing homes went into lockdown for COVID. I could have been one of the nursing home death statistics from the early days of COVID. I should have died that night in October 2019. I should have died in late December 2019. And I was dying again in December 2020 from CO2 poisoning, but He saved me from death yet again. That memory is, like my rehab stint, for another time.

I have made some huge mistakes in my life. I continue to stumble some days. I know it sounds trite, and probably a bit fantastical to those who do not believe in Jesus the way I have come to; however, I know without any doubt that I am a child of the King. Somedays I want to shout it from the rooftops. Why share all this now, almost two years since it all started? I am not sure, honestly. It felt like it was time. My mind has gradually cleared as time has passed, while my body continues to heal. I may never heal enough to travel and share my testimony in the traditional way, so I am doing it the best way I know how—by stringing words together. Two thousand, four hundred and thirty-five words (more now, I just stopped counting.) 

Most of these words are meaningless, though.