This this wasn’t was back but it also wasn’t good.
Author: My Two Blogs : Christmas In The ICU and My Health My Blog.
I have two blogs:
www.christmasintheicu.home.blog which is about the Christmas of 2017. I spent that Christmas in an induced coma. The point of the blog is educate people about what being in the ICU is really like. No…. Being in an induced coma is not just like nothingness or like sleeping peacefully. I was left with PTSD from the things that I experienced while in that induced coma. If you want to know more, head on over there and read all about it.
myhealthmyblog.wordpress is about my cancer. I’ve had two cancers in less than a year. So many non-medical people are telling me what my recovery should look like based on the recovery people they know experienced. I just need a place to express my thoughts and feelings about my own cancer and not be told I’m doing it wrong. I’m very blunt and very honest. This is the blog I’m posting on the most right now but I hope to finish the other blog sometime.
Thanks for reading this.
Canada’s MAID in death and dying.
On my other blog, I wrote a post about being with my father as he died. He was given the option for MAID, and he took it.
Note: Because I don’t know if wordpress terms of service allows me to discuss this form of death, please look up MAID dying in Canada to learn what it is. The people who read this and are in the medical profession, you most likely will have ideas and strong opinions about MAID.
The post is: Why didn’t I ask for more Time?, and the blog, which is about my experience of having cancer is: My Blog My Health.
Thank you for checking it out in advance.
Making a good impression. I know it’s important… I’m doing the best I can.
“Oh Shit!”, I muttered as I sat up in bed, searching for my phone, to see how long I slept.
It wasn’t on the bedside table, where I always put it at night. I clumsily looked around, before finding it underneath me, in bed, the battery dead.
“Mom?”, I called as I opened my bedroom door.
“Good morning sweetie”, she said.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“eleven”.
“Oh shit, oh shit, or shit”, I muttered on my way to the bathroom.
“What’s ‘oh shit’?”, my mother asked.
“My appointment with Dr. _(insert name)_ is at 12:00.”
“Don’t worry. If you leave now, you’ll be fine.”
“You don’t understand”, I yelled from the bathroom, “I have to get ready”.
“Well get ready.”
“I don’t have time.”
“You’re running late, but if you leave now…”
What Mom didn’t understand, what doctors don’t understand is this…
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“Your hair is really tangled”, Mom repeated for the tenth time, as she tried to get all of the tangles out of my hair.
“Yes, I know”, I said, “I haven’t done anything with my hair in days.”
“Oh honey bun…”. She said.
Not only hadn’t I brushed my hair in days, I didn’t remember the last time I brushed my teeth, or washed my face, or…
It all seemed to be so much work. Those things that I did without effort before, have become work, that just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort.
I also hadn’t showered…
changed my nightgown…
gone outside…
talked to anybody who didn’t live with me…
I needed to phone the pharmacy to repeat my medication, find somebody to fix the eavestrough, make arrangements to switch our winter tires, phone my social worker with the cancer centre, and make arrangements to have enough food to eat.
All of these things, weighed on me, making life even harder than it already was. I can feel the importance of these things, know I don’t feel strong enough to do them, and understand the consequences of not doing them. It doesn’t make me do these things. It just makes doing them… doing anything…even harder.
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Today it all came crashing down. I needed to get to that appointment. I’d already missed two appointments with this doctor (I tried to be at those appointments too). I couldn’t totally destroy his opinion of me by missing a third appointment, but I couldn’t go as I was.
He’d see the tangled hair, smell the stinky body, smell my stinky breath, and judge.
He wouldn’t see me as I am. He’d see me as an inconvenient problem who is socially beneath him, and not worthy of his time or attention.
Those times he discusses me with the team in the “interesting cases”, meetings would disappear. The input and phone calls I get (and presumably he gets) from other doctors about my unusual cancer would stop. I wouldn’t get the medical attention that I need, and I’d be left to deal with things on my own.
Because… If she doesn’t care about her health, why should we?
He wouldn’t see the sleepless nights, filled with remembering my father, and quietly crying, trying not to wake my mother up, but hoping she would wake up and comfort me.
He wouldn’t see the daily struggle.
He wouldn’t see, that although I am a mess and my life is falling apart I am trying as hard as I can.
I am not normally like this. I am kind, and generous. When Mom was sick the first time, I was super-daughter, rushing her to doctor after doctor until we finally got a doctor that was not only willing to diagnose her, but one that was willing to treat her normal pressure hydrocephalus (more about that here), and got her admitted to a rehabilitation ward in another hospital. When that was done, I arranged for her to have follow up care in our home.
All of this had to be asked for. Actually not just asked for, fought for. If you didn’t know how to fight for it, you were not given the best treatment.
When Dad was sick I took care of him for two years. I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to take care of his symptoms, and many times I woke up just a few hours later, because he needed me again.
When anything needed done, I was called. Many times I didn’t even need calling. I just knew what needed to be done.
The myth that those who live with their parents do nothing to help their parents really upsets me. I live here. When I am healthy I cook. I clean. I nurse when sick. I stay awake when needed. I’m woken up during the night. And I don’t mind. I want to help my parents when they need it.
And they help me. They take care of me when I need to be taken care of.
But this doctor…
He doesn’t see all that. He sees me for 5 minutes in each appointment. He spends three hours operating on me when I’m totally out cold. He decides who I am and judges me worthy or not worthy of his time and attention based on that.
It’s important to be clean and well presented at each appointment.
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Today…
Well I phoned the receptionist and asked if I could make another appointment and was told there was a cancelation at 2:00 pm. Could I go then? Yes.
I rushed around getting myself ready, and drove into the city.
I waited for 20 minutes behind an unexpected train.
And was late.
Admitting phoned and asked if I could still see him.
I could.
Mom and I walked to the examining rooms section of the hospital, was given one almost immediately (that hardly ever happens), saw the doctor and left about 5 minutes after arriving.
I felt so rushed, that I didn’t get to ask my important questions:
Did he get all of the cancer?
Did he think the cancer would come back?
Was the surgery hard to do?
How much cancer was there?
What do they do with the cancer tumour?
What are the stages of a cancer tumour? (Before my surgery, his resident mentioned it, but didn’t explain it).
But I didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell me. I was so nervous I forgot to ask, as he stood by the door, his hand on the doorknob, looking like I was so repulsive that he wanted to flee. He asked if I had any questions, and I forgot what the questions were. I said “no” and he left.
He did tell me “it looked good”, and that the cancer centre would “follow up”, and that I’d get “periodic scans” to insure there wasn’t “anymore cancer”.
And that was it.
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I drove home. Or at least I should have. Instead it was very apparent that we had a very flat tire, once we walked into the parking lot.
We went to were we usually get our tires, stumbled through describing the problem (I don’t know why I had so much trouble. I’m not an idiot but the guy who works at the tire wouldn’t know that from that very awkward exchange) got a “used loner tire”, so we could go home, and were told we have to go in again when the tire they ordered for us “comes in”.
Then we went to the gas station but couldn’t find enough cash between us to get even $20.00 of gas, spent way too much time discussing and deciding if what we had was enough to get enough gas to get home, drove to the bank, drove back to the gas station, and drove back to the back to the town we live in.
Before going home, we got slurpies and snacks, as well as something, for super. As of 8:01 pm we still haven’t cooked it. And we might not. This might become one of those days we eat nothing but small snacks like beef jerky and coke, and get to bed by 10:30 only to start crying and finally get to sleep at 4:00 am, each of us trying to be quite, and not wake the other person, who is wide awake and trying to do the same thing.
We might get up and repeat the process of getting through the day with as little sleep as possible, not having the ability or interest in cooking or eating anything, and repeating the night before.
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Doctor’s don’t see this. They don’t see the messy hair, because we don’t let them. They don’t see the sleepless nights because we don’t tell them about it. They don’t see the reason we aren’t eating because they wouldn’t understand in the first place.
They wouldn’t understand. We don’t even try to explain. We are doing the best we can, but they can’t understand that.
And then we get judged as uninterested / non-compliant / a bad historian or any other number of things they put in their charts about us.
And then the patients, who probably need their care the most, get pushed to the bottom of the priority list and get the least amount of care they are willing to give.
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Note: This would be the end of the blog post but… although I always knew making a good impression to every doctor was important, these two videos reinforced it. In one the doctor is upset because the patient is not giving enough information, and in the other the doctor is upset because the patient is giving two much information. I’ve been accused of both. “You didn’t tell me about this surgery…”, one doctor said and at another time another doctor said “You don’t need to tell me about something that far back”.
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Thank you for reading this post.
If you liked this post, please share it, like it, and/or subscribe to this blog? If you’ve already done that: thank you.
This is posted in both of my blogs. You can view my other blog here if you want to. And if you do, thank you for that too.
I’m really really very scared.
Surgery! To remove my Lymph node? In three days!?!
It scares the crap out of me.
I missed the conversation with my surgeon about it because I slept through it. Nothing fancy, like I was in the middle of a poop-a-thon (no that was the reason I missed another appointment – well sort of), or a cute man came to my doorstep and well fell madly in love, curing my cancer and everything else that was wrong with my life (as if real life ever follows the plots of made for TV romance movies).
No: I missed the appointment because I slept in (till 1:00 pm), and woke up to the sounds of the phone ringing me fitting into my dream. By the time I woke up, he had hung up.
I could have immediately phoned back, but I felt so low and hopeless that emotionally all I could do was cuddle up deeper in my blankets and try to go back to sleep. When that didn’t work, I watched youtube on my phone.
Emotionally, missing that appointment and other things hung over my head all weekend, bringing about daily tears and worries my surgeon will take it out on me by telling me off or (worse) doing my surgery badly on purpose.
I worry I’m strong enough to phone my surgeon’s secretary on Monday and tell her I’m really sorry and can I have another phone appointment to discuss my surgery.
I’m so afraid:
I’m afraid to call my surgeon’s secretary and tell her why I missed the appointment. I’m afraid to not call the secretary. I’m afraid of the surgery. I’m afraid of life after the surgery.
I’m just plain afraid.
And I don’t know what to do.
I wish I had somebody to just take over my life and say “don’t worry, I’ll take care of all of it”, but I don’t.
I have family that will drop me off in the morning to have my surgery, and pick me up at the end of the work day after my surgery, expecting me to wait around, in pain, and for hours after the surgery in the cafeteria of a hospital that is in one of the worst areas of my nearest city. (I live in a small town 45 minutes outside of the nearest city.)
I’m hoping I can arrange with the cancer clinic to stay at one of their “out of town” lodges for the afternoon after my surgery. Maybe this way I can get a bed, and not have to sit in an uncomfortable chair while I’m to “impaired” up to drive.
I’m afraid I won’t have groceries or other things I need after my surgery. I’m afraid I’ll be expected to be fully recovered just a week after my surgery, because so far only my mother believes how sick I am and how much I’m in pain with the cancer tumour that is on my lymph node right now and she lives with me. Instead I have family that tell me “I’m not walking enough”, and “not getting better fast enough” (from my first cancer).
Can I even live without a lymph node? Will I have to take medicine to replace what the lymph node does? Won’t a missing lymph node damage my immune system, making it easier to get covid and every other virus under the sun?
Will this misstep with missing the surgeon’s phone call irreparably damage my relationship with my surgeon? What about with my two oncologists? Doctor’s do talk to each other about shared patients. Don’t they?
And… That’s not my only worry. One of the eavestroughs of the house partially detached itself from the roof. I don’t know how I’m going to get that fixed and recover from surgery at the same time.
Will the cancer come back a third time? This is my second cancer in a year. I thought I had dealt with cancer and getting treatment and it was all over… And then this lymph node cancer comes up. What if a third comes in another 6 months? I already had more radiation (for that area) than I can ever have in my life time. That’s why they are removing this cancer and not treating it with radiation. Chemotherapy won’t work either, because all though I can have more chemotherapy having more for this type of cancer is not effective. (Yes I had chemotherapy and radiation at the same time.)
So what if a third cancer comes? With radiation, chemotherapy and surgery all being options tried and failed, what else will happen? Will they just tell me to go home because I’m dying?
Who will be there for my mother in her old age if that happens?
I wish my father was here for all this, but he died a year ago. The day after my surgery will be exactly 1 year after his death.
What are the chances? My father dies, and then I’m diagnosed with cancer just a few months later?
When my father was dying, my brother visited constantly. With my being really sick, we hardly see him. I’m afraid to piss him off by talking to him about it because I don’t want him to get mad and not drive me to my surgery. He already refuses to get groceries for us or drive me to appointments.
And that’s my life right now. It sucks. Well I haven’t even dealt with the poop-a-thons or the pain that consumes many days even though I am on pain killers. Maybe in other blog posts I’ll deal with those. Maybe not. (Note: 2 months later I did write about poop-a-thons. If your interested check out #10 in This post titled: 10 Things that demonstrate how Ugly Cancer Sometimes is.)
Thank you for reading this blog. Since this post was made, I created another blog to help me deal with my cancer, because cancer and the ICU are two different health problems.
Although I will one day post more on this blog, and finish the story of my ICU experience, at this time I am writing more on my other blog, My Health My Blog.
This link will take you to it.
Again thank you very much for reading my blog. If you like what you read, please share it and / or subscribe?
10 Good things that ICU and hospital staff did:
It’s been more than year of a really stressful pandemic, that has made millions of people sick, many of them being admitted to the ICU, and many dying.
ICU’s are more full than they ever have been before, creating impossible workloads for many ICU staff.
I’m having a hard time too. Sometimes it feels like my heart will just burst of sadness and other times I’m so agitated that small things like the ever growing pile of laundry seems so monumental that it’s unsolvable.
The world is falling apart, with political changes and undercurrents, outward proud racists seem to be increasing in numbers, mass shootings, and many other things splash across our news screens everyday, making the world seem hopeless, and ending.
When I got out of the ICU, I typed in the hashtag #ICU into twitter, and was introduced to the wonderful world of tweeting ICU staff. So many of you were so kind and generous with answering questions, and many of you followed me back.
When I started this blog, you read it, retweeted it, liked my tweets and responded to my tweets. You let me know that what I was saying was important, and you listened.
Thank you. You helped me to emotionally heal a bit (not all the way yet).
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I’ve been trying to think of a way to give back to you, during what must be a very stressful time for you. It’s stressful to be in the ICU, and to have family in the ICU, but it’s also stressful to have a suddenly increased workload, be wearing so much PPE that you look like space martians, and then be told that Covid is all a hoax, the hospital’s are empty and you are lying about that workload.
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I have always wanted to help people with this blog. Improving the ICU for those that come after me is the very reason I write it. I admit that each time the viewership goes up, I get a little emotional energy jolt, but that wasn’t the reason I started it. It’s also not the reason I haven’t given up on writing it, even though my life has gotten harder. I feel guilty that I’m not able to write in it as much as I used to.
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Hopefully this list of good things that happened in the ICU and in the ward after the ICU makes your load a little bit easier to carry and your heart smile just a bit for just a while.
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1.) I am alive. I did not die in the ambulance when I stopped breathing. I did not die on Christmas day when I crashed.
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2.) I was so out of it. I knew that occasionally there were people who stood at the end of my bed and talked, but I didn’t know who they were or what they were talking about. I thought maybe they had their staff meetings there.
One day my nurse leaned over me and said “the doctor’s are going to be doing rounds soon. They will stand right there,” she pointed, ”and they will talk about your case. You can listen because it’s about you. You can also ask questions if you want to.”
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3.) I couldn’t speak because I was still intubated. I asked for paper and wrote “I’m sorry.”
My nurse looked at me and asked “Why? You didn’t do anything wrong?”.
“I’m sorry for being racist.” I wrote.
“When were you racist”, she asked.
“When I sang racist songs to you.” I replied.
“You weren’t racist. You didn’t sing anything racist. You can’t sing. You can’t even talk. You have a tube in your throat that prevents that. You’re writing this down to me right now.”
“Oh”, I wrote, and leaned back.
She didn’t say I was the worst person in the world, because I was racist, which I feared she would. She didn’t laugh when it was obvious I was talking about something that didn’t happen. She continued to treat me very well, without resentment. She was one of the best nurses I had and I really really liked her.
Note: This will make much more sense if you you read My ICU experience in chapters, on this blog. There you will see that under sedation I didn’t know if I was male or female, and didn’t know if alive, dead of in purgatory (I’m not even Catholic). It was a complete loss of self, including my believe I was the worst person in the world who was a racist, and was so bad, that the doctors decided to keep me in a permanent coma to protect the nurses.
Although my nurse didn’t know this, and the apology made no sense to her, she didn’t take this apology the wrong way, and I am very grateful.
Over the days after I woke from sedation, her face became a reassuring symbol that I was safe in her care.
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4.) When I was sedated, and totally out of it, a nurse washed, and braided my waist length hair. She even put her own scrunchies and barrettes in my hair to make me “look nice”. That touched my parents so much that they told me about it several times.
To be perfectly honest: It’s not waist length anymore. I got it cut to be layered and about 6 inches shorter about 3 weeks ago and it still seems really short, although to others it’s probably still long.
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5.) When I asked for information on twitter, you tweeted me studies that answered my questions. I needed to understand and I wanted to tell the world about what the ICU was like, and you helped me to do that.
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6.) When I tweeted asking about the long term effects of sepsis which I got while I was in the ICU, you told me about the UK Sepsis Trust, where I got all the information I needed.
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7.) An ICU doctor told this joke “An ICU doctor went to a conference. His wife was worried about being lonely when he was gone. He told her to get something to keep her company while he was gone. When he came home, he found his wife in bed with another man, and yelled “A dog, I meant you should get a dog to keep you company, not a man.”
Yep it’s a corny joke, but it and all the other corny jokes he told made me smile. He started each day with a corny joke that made everybody laugh, and I’m sure he didn’t realize his patients heard him, but I did, and it brightened a part of each awake days there.
8.) I have started many tweets with “As a patient, I”. You considered and respected one patients point of view. Thank you.
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9.) I laid in my ICU bed. A nurse took a Christmas mint out of a pile of Christmas mints and put it in her mouth, before coming to my bed and leaning over me. The smell made me want a Christmas mint, which I love.
She must have realized this, because she walked to the garbage and spit it out, before coming back to me.
That small kindness, did not go unnoticed
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10.) I wanted a pen and paper almost as soon as I woke up from sedation, and I was freely given a pen and as much paper as I wanted. I still have those notes that I wrote about what happened under sedation.
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Hopefully this brightened your day a bit. It brightened my day to write it, so much that I continued after 10 and wrote 20 things.
I will post the first 10 now, and the next ten when I have time (hopefully tomorrow).
If this made your smile, and helped you please help other people by tweeting good things that happen in your ICU, with the hashtag #GoodICU and / or sharing this blog post in any way you can.
What to tell your loved one in the ICU.
I stood at the nurses station, swaying at bit, from the unsteadiness that started in the ICU, and watched a nurse write my request in a big blue binder. “What is that”, I asked.
“It’s your binder.”
“What’s in it?”, I asked.
He used the fingers of his right hand to ruffle the pages of the binder, “It’s the history of your stay here. Everything that happened to you, is written in here.”
“Can I read it?”, I asked.
“You don’t want to read this.”, he replied, which is a strange response since I just asked if I could read it.
“No I want to read it”, I said.
He continued trying to talk me out of reading it, but I knew the law and said “It’s my file, and the law says I can read anything that’s about me.”
“You’ll have to fill out a form to get a copy.”
“Give me the form.”
“I’ll get it to you later”.
I wobbled back to my room, still feeling extremely unsteady, as if I might fall over at any minute.
He never did bring me a form. Everyday I went to the nurses station and asked for a form, and everyday I was given a delay tactic.
When I got home from the hospital, I complained to one of my doctors about not being able to read my file, and he told me what website to go to get a form. I filled out the form, paid the money, and got the file.
I wanted that file, because I did not know what happened to me. I had a vague idea, but not enough to satisfy my questions that nobody was answering.
My family would probably have answered the questions by that point, but our area of the world had a cold front at that time, preventing most cars from starting and many roads to be closed.
What should be told to an ICU patient and when? That was a question asked by Dr. Megan Hosey that said “Family members of ICU patients commonly ask me “What should I tell them about the ICU and when?”, before following up with a tweet that asked ICU survivors what they thought. (I would link the tweets here, but I don’t know how.)
Thank you Dr. Hosey for the idea and allowing me to respond to your question in a blog post.
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I had no idea what happened? I had no memory of the days before I entered the ICU and my memories of being in the ICU were delirium filled.
Before I woke from sedation I knew on some level that I was in the hospital, but I didn’t know why. At some point my brother told me I had started smoking and it was my fault I was in the ICU. That wasn’t true. I’ve never smoked in my life.
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While your loved one is under sedation talk to them and tell them:
1.) Where they are
2.) Why they are there
3.) Why they can’t move (bed restraints, sedation, ect.) Why they are in bed restraints and or under sedation. Don’t let them think it’s because they are a bad person, somebody is trying to kill them or anything else like that.
4.) That they might have delirium what they see might not be real. (I saw all sorts of things, that you can read about in the blog – both written now and written in the future).
5.) Who is visiting
6.) That you love them.
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When they wake up from sedation:
7.) Repeat the information above, because it might not be remembered from one day to the next. I seemed to have lost my object permanence when I was in the ICU and for months afterwards. If something wasn’t right in front of me I simply didn’t think about it. I brushed my teeth, if I saw my toothbrush in the morning. I had to keep my pills on the table where I sat or I’d forget to take them all day. I ate only when I was hungry, because it was hunger that reminded me I needed to eat. Because things are so easily forgotten when a person is extremely sick, things will need to be repeated.
8.) The time and date.
Time does a strange little thing in the ICU. It’s hard to understand, but it bends and becomes non-existent. At one time my brother was there, only he was a child, and his son was standing beside him, the same age as he was. Without clocks or calendars time becomes even more confusing that it already is. Many ICUs don’t have windows and the lights are on all day and all night long, making any way tracking time difficult. Help your loved one to orientate to time, by telling them the time and date.
9.) Answer any questions about why they are there.
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After the ICU but in the ward.
This is where I wanted more information, and started asking for my file. I still had a bit of delirium but I knew that the clock wasn’t really sliding off the wall. It was just because I was seeing things.
10.) Tell the person what happened.
11.) Answer all the questions asked.
12.) Tell them about delirium, and that what they are seeing and hearing might not be real. They don’t need to be afraid of it either.
On my first night in the ward, I called a nurse in and asked “Are there fire works on the ceiling, or am I developing schizophrenia”.
She asked “Why do you think you have schizophrenia?”
“Well because I’m seeing fireworks on the ceiling, and I don’t think medicare pays for such fancy light shows in the hospital. That would be a waste of healthcare funding.”
“No,” she said, “the health region does not pay for light shows in the hospital, but you don’t have schizophrenia either. You have been through a very traumatic event and the brains way of dealing with that is to see and hear things that aren’t there.”
“Ok.”
“Do you want me to get some medicine to make it go away.”
Still watching the light show I said “no, I’ll just enjoy my own private fireworks shows. As long as I’m not getting something else wrong with me. I didn’t want to deal with getting schizophrenia that’s all.”’
The patient across the hall laughed, and the nurse smiled before saying “ok, enjoy the show”, and I did, that is until the not so nice stuff started happening.
Once I knew that I was seeing things, and was not developing a mental illness, the delirium was easier to deal with.
I do wish the nurse had called it delirium. It wasn’t until I got home and read tweets on twitter, that I realized it was delirium.
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After they are home:
I am guilty of this as well. Before I got sick, my mother was in the hospital for 100 days because of a major brain illness. She remembered nothing about what happened when she was sick. When she got home from the hospital she asked questions about her illness almost everyday. Many times it was the same questions.
Although I answered her questions and talked about it when she wanted to talk, I was frustrated, and I don’t think I did as well as I could have.
When I got home from the hospital, I understood and felt a tremendous amount of guilt for not being as patient as I should have.
Thankfully she was more patient than I was, and answered my questions again and again.
It’s hard not knowing what happened, why it happened, but also having this false delirium induced memory of what happened.
13.) Allow the person to discuss that delirium. It may not have happened to you, but it happened to your loved on, and it was scary, and horrifying. It’s a trauma in an of itself, and it can cause PTSD. I was diagnosed with PTSD from my ICU experience. Sometimes calling it delirium seems like a lie and a threat to me, because to me it really happened, and to me it still hurts a lot.
14.) Help your loved one get their own file if they want it, and allow them to read it at their own pace.
15.) Show them pictures if you took any.
My mother took pictures, and I copied them onto my phone. I still look at the often. At first I looked at them almost everyday.
16.) Tell your loved ones, months and years later, that it’s ok to still think about it, wonder about it and ask questions about it. Don’t expect your loved one to be over it. To them it is not in the past. It happened. I think about it everyday and if I allow myself, I feel the pain of it everyday. Things have moved on with my family, and I feel the need to move on with them, but it’s not something I’ve gotten over. I still want to talk about it, write about it and deal with it, but I also feel selfish for wanting to.
Thank you for reading this. If you want to know more, you can read more of this blog, or follow me on twitter for updates. If want to be mentioned in my blog twitter updates, let me know.
Please like this blog post or tweet the tweet it was mentioned in, and share this blog with others? You’re sharing it and liking it, encourages me to keep writing and makes me heart smile.
Is Trump the Chosen One or a False Prophet?
Donald Trump, claims to be the chosen one, and many american republican christians believe he is the chosen one. But is he?
Although this blog is normally about medical stuff, the current political situation and my fear for the future necessitates I post this now.
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The bible explicitly tells us how we can tell if somebody is “in the spirit” in Galatians 5:22-26.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nation with it’s passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”
Does Trump have any of these Fruits of the Spirit:
Love:
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 describes love as “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres.”
Trump is not patient. He wants things his way and he wants it immediately. When the capitol building was being stormed and his vice president was in danger, Trump was still demanding to have his own way.
Trump is not kind. We can see that in the many mean tweets he has sent.
Trump envies. He’s jealous of Biden getting more votes than him.
Trump boasts. He’s always calling things he did as the “greatest the world has ever seen” etc.
Trump is proud. Remember that “big envelope” he was so proud of having.
Trump is rude. He pushed aside another world leader at the UN, and walked in front of the Queen.
Trump is self-seeking. He doesn’t care if he destroys his own country, it’s democracy, the buildings it meets in, or the people who meet there. He betrayed Mike Pence, his vice president who stood by him for 4 years.
Trump is easily angered. He fires people for their first offences. There is no second chance with him.
Trump delights in evil. He was “border line excited” that people were rioting, hurting people, destroying property, terrifying people and killing people.
I don’t know if Trump keeps a record of wrongs. I’m pretty sure he does, and he never forgives, but the rapid pace of this presidency, makes it hard to think about the past. Does he bring up past wrongs when he is with people? I don’t really know.
Trump does not rejoice in the truth. He rejoices in lies. He lost the election. But he tells people he won, and then when they do violence because of that lie, he rejoices. That is not rejoicing in the truth.
Trump does not protect anybody. Everybody is available for firing and blaming, even those who are on his side. Nick names like “Lying Ted”, and setting a mop on Mike Pence demonstrate this.
I don’t know if Trump trusts anybody.
Trump does seem to have hope that the election will be called in his favour regardless of all evidence it won’t. Is that hope or delusion? I don’t know.
Trump doesn’t persevere in love. He doesn’t say “I forgive you for that mistake and I love you anyway. Let’s move on.”. If he did, there wouldn’t be so many people fired from the white house, and he would have cared that so many people wanted to murder his vice president.
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Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control:
I don’t know if Trump has joy. I’ve never seen evidence of it, but maybe he does.
Trump does not bring peace. His last rally brought a violent riot. That’s very very far from peace.
Patience and kindness were dealt with under love.
Trump doesn’t have goodness either. It is not good to make people fear you, to incite a riot, to betray everybody who crosses you, to endanger an entire country and it’s democracy, or to be so selfish you are worried about your own political future instead of the life of your vice president, who only says “no” to you once in 4 years.
Trump does not have faithfulness. If he did, he’d be more faithful to his friends and followers. If you think Trump will be faithful to you, look at all the people who supported him who he has betrayed, fired, called names, and destroyed. He does not have a pattern of behaviour that demonstrates faithfulness.
Trump is not gentle.
Trump doesn’t have any self control. He has the self-control of a spoiled toddler. Even toddlers can be told “no”, but Trump never handles that word well.
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Conclusion:
Trump does not have many Fruits of the Spirit and he doesn’t have love.
Is he the chosen one?
No he is not.
1 Corinthians 13:1b says “If I speak in the tongues of men and angles, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
Are you following a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal? Or are you following somebody who has love, and the rest of the Fruits of the Spirit?
Jesus said in Matthew 7:15 – 16a “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them.”
Trump is a false prophet. He does not have the Fruit of the Spirit, he does not “love his neighbour as himself”, and does not love you. He may have said he does, but he demonstrates a complete lack of love for everybody except himself.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask God to show you the truth, and he will.
Matthew 7:7 says “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Three years ago today, I became an ICU patient.
This is a hard day for me.
3 years ago this morning in the wee hours of the morning, I threw up until I couldn’t walk anymore. My mother held my waist length hair back to prevent it from getting in the toilet.
I don’t remember any of this. I don’t remember not being able to walk back to bed without help, or going back to sleep.
I do remember waking up and realizing my tongue was huge, and telling my mother to phone my doctor.
I remember my clothes being cut off, the nightmare that is sedation, and waking up from sedation.
I don’t remember getting sepsis and pneumonia and crashing on Christmas day.
I don’t remember waking up the second time (or was it the first time).
I know I almost died, twice.
And I know that that will be with me forever.
It’s not like the movies.
I didn’t not get to a happy ending or to ride off into the sunset with music that let everyone know I would be just fine.
Instead I could barely walk out of the hospital, and when I got into the car it was cold, dark and gloomy.
I could barely speak above a whisper for months, and my throat felt so raw from a tube being pushed down it with enough force to reach my lungs, twice. (once when I got to the hospital and once when I crashed).
There no happy ending or happily ever after. It’s a fairy tale lie.
There’s been reflection on why I am alive, and really the answers been “I don’t know.”. Why did I live when so many other’s died?
I’d like to believe that I have some future that I have to fulfil, but I’m not sure of that. Maybe? Hopefully?
I’d like there to be a happy ending, where I say “everyday is a gift”, but that’s not true. It hasn’t made me appreciate live any more, made me happy every day, or given me a “new lease on life”. It’s the same old life.
It’s just as hard, if not harder because in the years since, covid has come and has not gone, my father was diagnosed as palliative, I became one of his main caregivers, the house has gotten messier, I spend most days in my pajamas just trying to survive, and somedays I don’t eat all day, followed by days I do eat all day.
There’s no good end to this. Either I completely wear out from caregiving or my father dies. It’s not going to end well.
Having almost died, does not make this any easier. It doesn’t make me more thankful to be alive. Why would it?
Live is hard, and it’s not just hard for me. It’s hard for many people, especially right now with covid, the cancellation of Christmas gatherings, and people intent on making it harder on everyone by protesting new mask laws.
You would think, that reflecting on almost dying, would be a happy and upbeat reflection. It’s not. I’m sorry if that’s what you came for, but I won’t lie to you.
Being as sick as one can be without dying is not fun, and it’s not joyful afterwards either. It doesn’t give you a new lease on life. It doesn’t make life better than before. You just go back to the same old life you had before with the same old problems you had before.
I planned on doing what I could for making life easier for people who were in the ICU as soon as I woke up from sedation. Later as I read the tweets of ICU staff I wanted to make things better for staff too.
I wanted to write my storey, and I had plans for making a support group for former and present ICU patients and their families.
I didn’t do either. I tried to, but as Dad got sicker and my caregiving roles increased, and life took over, I slowly stopped keeping this blog up or making inquiries into support groups at the hospital. I felt guilty for focusing on my problems as Dad got sicker and sicker.
I admire those people like John Walsh who set up America’s Most Wanted after his son was beheaded by a serial killer, but I don’t know how he did it without being side tracked by other things.
I don’t know. I wish I did.
I did not have covid. I had an allergic reaction to a newly prescribed medication.
But…
You do not want to be that sick. You do not want to get covid. You do not want to crash on any day. You do not want to be intubated. You do not want to be extubated. You do not want the PTSD that comes after hospital discharge.
There is no happy ending. Life goes on. More family tragedies happen.
Everyday does not become a gift. Instead every day becomes hard. It gets hard to wake up, hard to keep going, and hard to do basic things like eating, brushing teeth or doing hair. PTSD (which many people get from being in the ICU), follows you around making life harder. There is no “new lease on live”. That is Hollywood fiction.
If you don’t want your life to get even harder than it is right now. If you want brushing your teeth to be a simple daily task and not a chore you put off for days, than do all you can from preventing you and your loved ones from getting covid.
Wear a mask. Social Distance. Wash you hands. Stay at home as often as you can.
It’s hard. I know. I would love to go to a hotel and just be by myself and relax in a Jacuzzi all day, like I’ve done before. I need alone time to just be and think, but it’s hard to get now.
I need new clothes, because three of my jeans have ripped now. I want to get my bangs cut.
But I’m doing all of that, because I know it is infinitely worse to be in the ICU, under sedation, not knowing if you are alive, dead or in purgatory, without any indication of time, and unable to move because you are tied to the bed.
I can’t imagine what it is like without visitors.
If you don’t want what happened to me, to happen to you, take covid seriously, and take all precautions.
I wish there was a happy ending. I wish I did “have a new lease on live”. I wish everyday was a gift.
But that’s just not the way it works in real live. It really isn’t.
I yell profanities at my organs.
I was born with internal differences to my organs.
One of my organs is a complete brat, who stands up and yells “Pay attention to me. ME ME ME! I need to be the CENTER of attention. It’s all about ME. Only ME!”, whenever any other part of my body is sick and needs attention.
And I end up yelling “Fuck You (name of organ)”, to my organ. Sometimes it’s an entire paragraph, of “Fuck You. You are not the centre of attention. It’s not all about you. Do not bother me.”
But of course it is… partly.
That particular organ has gotten a lot of attention, and is by now it completely used to demanding my life revolve around it… maybe I should be too.
I’m not. I’m angry with my body. I can not and will not embrace my body, and not because of it’s looks, weight or any other superficial reason.
I will not become “at one with my body”, or any of those other hokey euphemisms healthy people tout without knowledge.
I will not accept my body is me, because I’m not broken.
I may be flawed, I may have grumpy days and days that all I want to do is cry. Everybody does.
But I am not as broken as my body.
I have always known that my body and me are separate. Even as a child. That’s why I can yell “Fuck you”, to my different organs, without saying “Fuck you”, to myself.
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I wish all health professionals knew what it was like to be sick, to have an organ or body part that doesn’t obey, to know that the body and mind are not one, and to know what it’s like to just get up in the morning and ignore aches, pains and illnesses until it can no longer be ignored.
I wish they understood that dilemma when asked a piece of medical history. Should I mention it? Is it related? It’s really to do with this other problem I’ve already been diagnosed with? Will it just muddy the water?
If I mentioned everything in my medical history, you and I would be in that examining room way too long. Try all afternoon.
And then there are the times I just simply forget to mention things because I’m so busy ignoring them that I’m still ignoring them in the examining room.
One specialist doctor asked so many rapid fire questions, I didn’t have time to think about any of the answers. After 10 or more questions quickly fired in my direction, she told me there was nothing wrong with me, and not to waste her time.
She asked so quickly, I got anxious and answered all the questions wrong. I asked for a second opinion but the second specialist, looked at the notes of the first doctor and said “I talked to Dr. So and So. These are her notes, and I agree with her, but here’s some medication you can take.”, handed me a prescription and got up to leave the room. I followed because I had no other choice.
I still wonder if both doctors are wrong, but with her notes, whatever they say, every specialist in her field in my city, who all work out of the same hospital, are going to agree with her. Asking for a third opinion is a waste of everybody’s time, and the systems money.
My family doctor agrees. He thinks I do have the problem he originally sent me for, and is trying to manage the problem without the direction of a specialist, but why should he have to? Why should one doctor’s complete ignorance about what it’s like to answer those questions when you have been sick all your life and have multiple diagnosis’s, get in the way of my health? Why should she have so much power?
Maybe if she understood how difficult it is to answer questions delivered so quickly when you’re asking yourself so many questions about how to answer them, she would give her patients time to think before she asks another question?
I really do wish that all medical professionals were given a drug with a half life of 2 weeks (or even a month), that made them chronically sick for that time period. I want them to wake up in pain, and consciously think about getting out of bed, before they do it.
I want them to have a handful of pills they have to take multiple times a day, and figure out how hard it is to remember each and every dosage, each and every day.
I want them to know what it’s like to be hungry, know you have to eat because not eating will make you sicker, but not have the energy to cook something. Finally you just pick something from a box, put it in the oven and forget about it until it’s ready, but it causes guilt because you know you need to eat better, and unhealthy food might make things worse, but it’s better than eating nothing, because if I eat nothing I can’t take my pills and then…. And the thoughts go in circles of guilt.
I want them to know what it’s like to be too tired to exercise, but feel guilty that you aren’t exercising because you know you should, and then have to explain that to somebody who judges when they “how much exercise do you get”, at your next doctor’s appointment.
I want them to understand how much guilt there is in being sick.
I want them to know they don’t have to add more guilt, and that adding guilt doesn’t help me to be more “compliant”, to only makes it harder.
I want them to know how chronically sick people can be caregivers of even sicker people in the family, put themselves last, and feel guilty about paying attention to their own health problems (even mentioning them), because somebody else is sicker.
I want them to know what it is like to calculate in your head, how much energy it takes to go to the bathroom, and then figure out if it will take more or less energy to return to the place you are when you’re done or just go to bed.
I want them to know, that they don’t see patients at their sickest (unless they are in the ICU), because patients who are really sick, don’t have the energy or health it takes to get dressed, get in the car, drive to the doctor, find a parking space, walk to the office, and see the doctor. Instead they wait until they are feeling healthier to either go to the doctor or just forget about it and get one with life. Or they get so sick they can’t stand it and get somebody to drive them to the emergency room.
I want medical professionals to take a drug, be this sick for a month, and truly understand what it is like to be chronically sick.
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Until you know what it’s like to yell one of your organs with frustration, anger and desperation, and understand what it’s like to be sick (from experience) don’t judge me.
My ICU Experience Chapter 6:
The Chapters form is back, well at least for now. I’ve been stuck on it for so long. Hopefully you’ll see chapter 7 next week.
Of course, there is one thing I learned during this very chaotic time in my life: never make plans. If I make plans something will inevitably make this plans impossible to actualize. If I don’t make plans, I’ll have a good day in which I could do something.
At least that’s the way it seems to be going lately.
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If don’t know about my Chapters, I am writing my ICU experience in chapters, like a novel, because I have novel writing exprience. You can read chapters 1 to 5 by going to the heading “my experience in chapters at the top of this blog, and I encourage you to do so.
Everything that happens in the chapters, happened to me while I was in the ICU. Some of it was because of sedation, didn’t actually happen, but it happened to me, as real as anything else happened to me.
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My Experience in Chapters – Chapter 6:
I turned from the nurses, who were talking about urine feeds, and followed a empty hospital hallway. As I walked the hallway turned to sand, and the sand turned to desert.
A crowd of people, wandered through and sat at tables in the sand, at outdoor restaurant, entirely made of sand.
A little girl came up to me took my hand and said “Come with me”.
She lead me through buildings and a street made entirely of sand, until I came across my cousin, who greeted me and introduced me to his husband Avers, and his children: a three year old and a baby.
My cousin lead me through the sand, to a mansion made entirely of sand.
“Sand?” I said “You made a real sand castle?”
“Ya isn’t it great? When we get tired of part of it, all we do is tear it down, and build a new part of it. The sand is free. We can add as many additions on to it as we want. Come in.” He lead me to the door, but the idea of being in a sand castle, unnerved me a bit.
I stopped at the door, and asked “Won’t the sand collapse in on us?” I asked.
“No, no, this is a new way of building with sand. It won’t fall until we want it to.”
Still skeptical I followed him in. It was gorgeous. The kitchen, with sand counters, a sand table, sand chairs and sand appliances, lead into a patio that overlooked the beach. As I sat and visited, I watched the water lap into the shore.
“It’s nice for swimming.” I commented.
“Oh ya, the children love to take swimming lessons.”
“I can imagine” I said, as I recounted my own experiences with swimming lessons.
My cousin, and his husband told me about their children and their lives living in this land where everything was made of sand. I started becoming less and less involved, and more and more like I was watching it on a TV, but not apart of it.
I watched cousin take his 3 year old daughter, to a fashion company to design a new nail polish, that marbled as it went on the nails.
She enthusiastically designed the entire nail polish from the colours, how it would marble, and what the end product would be like. Although she was only 3 years old, she acted like a miniature CEO, making all the decisions with the aid of woman who worked for the fashion company.
Her face was put on all the ads and she was made the new “it” girl. This was famous three year old, who everybody wanted their child to be like, lead the fashion industry, and made all the money for the family.
As my cousin was pouring all his attention into his 3 year old, this nail polish (that the fashion company was backing), a famous billionaire (who I won’t name because he really exists), stole the land my cousin and Avers bought, as well as the sand castle on it, and the baby in it.
My cousin took his 3 year old, left the fashion house, and tried to get his baby back. The famous billionaire refused to give the baby back, or to let anybody go and get him.
Just as my cousin’s baby was crawling through sand, perliously close to the ocean with the tide coming it, I was screaming “he’s going to die”, as my cousin hired a helicopter, parachuted on to the beach, grabbed the baby, and ran away.
When my cousin and his daughter returned to the fashion company, they had already moved on to the new “it” child who was even younger and cuter.
Having spent all of their money, my cousin and his husband, tried to make their baby the new “it” child, but were told there the baby was too old and there was a 10 year waiting list for “it” children. They would have to audition a baby that wasn’t born yet, time the babies birth for just the right time, and then go through the process again, if they wanted another “it” child.
Deciding they couldn’t wait 10 years they, found another way to make money and rebuild their lives.
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Note: Although this particular cousin doesn’t have a husband or children, it didn’t register as odd that he did at the time.
Note #2: I shortened this storey. As you can see it’s not in novel form. I stuck trying to decided if should even include this storey, because it is so odd and unlike the rest of my ICU experience. I wonder if it was a dream. Why did I fade from my own storey, and become like I was watching it on a tv? Why did it include people who didn’t exist? Why was it so detailed? If I’d written it with dialog it could have become fantasy novella.
In the end, I need to unstuck myself and because it happened in my sedation and is apart of my ICU experience I will include it, even though it is very weird.
Note#3: As always please share this blog post with others.
Thank you for reading and thank you in advance for sharing it.
Christmas in the ICU 