Welcome to Christmas in ICU. It’s called that because I was in the ICU one Christmas, and although it was more than a year ago, I am still recovering.
I am a writer. I have been a writer since I was 11 years old (almost 12) and my grandfather died. My teacher suggested I write a diary of my feelings, and I’ve kept a diary every since.
As soon as I awoke from sedation in the ICU I knew that I wanted to write about my experience, because I knew I was the only one who knew what it was like for me. There were times I couldn’t decided if I was dead or alive. An man who obviously wasn’t real tormented me the entire time. I knew that being under sedation, crashing and almost dying twice was something many people didn’t know about, and I wanted to tell them, because I wanted to help all those who were still under sedation, and were not understood.
I started writing in my diary within days of waking up, but I couldn’t start the book I wanted to write from it. Although I’ve written several other books (although I’ve only written 3 query letters and all of them were rejected), countless short stories, several essays, and a diary kept since I was 11 years old (almost 12), I haven’t been able to write about my own experience in the ICU with the depth I would like to.
Emotionally I can’t sit down and write it in chronicolgical order. Not yet anyway. I’ve written parts of it on my twitter account, and several more parts in my diary, but some of the really bad things, I just can’t bring myself to write.
I haven’t written fiction since I got sick either. I’ve tried, but I feel like I can’t.
This blog is meant to be a first step into writing again, and getting at least part of my life back to what it was.
It will most likely be rebuttals and essays about tweets (sometimes the 280 character limit is just too constricting), things I remember, and things I want other people to know about being a patient in the ICU.
If you’ve read this far, thank you, and I hope you join me in this emotional (for me) journey into writing (reading for you), into life in and after the ICU.
Thank you.
Note: Because this blog has been transferred from another blog hosting site, many posts will be posted today. All but one will be posts from the other site.
Christmas in the ICU 