In my diary I list “Things I can do today that I couldn’t do yesterday”. Here are some of them.

As I said before, I started documenting my recovery from illness almost as soon as I woke up from sedation.

When I first woke up, I didn’t think I lost any abilities. I was wrong. It’s been 18 months and I’m just now sort of getting to where I was before. I still haven’t regained all of my abilities, but I’m reassured by my mother that she sees improvements in my abilities often.

One of the things I did, was list the things I had done for the first time since getting sick, and put big colourful boxes around the statement “this can go under the category of things I haven’t done before since I was sick”, when I did do something new.

Almost a month after entering ICU: “Read without covering one eye”.

When I first awoke from sedation, I couldn’t read. The words were just squiggly lines. As I got better, I could read with one eye covered, and then it was only Archie Comics that were lettered by Bill Yoshida (not even all the stories), and then large print books. Finally this month, started a novel for the very first time.

I always have had dyslexia, but my dyslexia became so much worse when I was sick.

A month after going into the ICU: “I’m not seeing just shapes anymore, which is good.” Yes at first I saw only shapes. Everything was dark, and I couldn’t distinguish faces. If you were about the same hight, weight and skin colour as somebody else, I couldn’t distinguish you from the other person. I really appreciated hospital staff who introduced themselves each and every time they approached my bed.

6 weeks after going into the ICU: “Explain things to mom and make sense.”

6 weeks after going into the ICU: “Realize that I said mean things to people when I was angry”.

6 weeks after going into ICU: “Laugh out loud”

7 weeks after going into ICU: “Walk to the bathroom without huffing and puffing once I got there.”

7 weeks after going into the ICU: “Make my bed. The blankets didn’t see as heavy”.

9 weeks after going into the ICU: “Walk to the school parking lot”. The school is across the street. We can hear the bell and the morning announcements in our house when our doors and windows aren’t open.

3 months after gong to the ICU: “Make a meal by myself. Cauliflower and cheese sauce”.

That’s it for now.

If you are interested in more, please let me know. I skipped things to make the list shorter, and I haven’t gone to the end.

Honestly, I want to make this blog to help ICU staff and current and future patients of the ICU. I also want to help myself get back into writing.

But… well. I don’t know if this will help. Do you want to know how quickly and slowly people get better after being in the ICU? I’m starting to get the anxiety and extreme tiredness I feel most of the time I look at my old diaries and what really happened. So this might be a short list, and a terrible blog post but it’s the best I can do at this time.

I also have diary entries of how I was emotionally feeling. I’m obviously not a robot, and I can and will decide what to put in this blog, but if you tell me what you want, I can give that to you too.

Thanks.

As always, if this is helpful to you, please share it.