KNOWING the simplicity. Not embracing.

I'm at this weird point in thinking. I'm not sure if its illusion, dream, or reality. 

I'm stricken by this thought about my life. I mean, I'll write it out. Bullet point the struggles and joys, the pain and love but at the end of it all, what am I? 

I envision a hoarding parade at my funeral. All given a chance to stand up and tell their impression of me. Give an overall summary gathered through brief encounters and Facebook status updates. "She was funny" they'll say. "She was a joy, lit up a room upon entering". These delightful little snippets of delusion designed to distract my relatives from grief. But the truth of it all is that I doubt they know me either.   

No one truly knows enough about another to give a valid summary. Or is there a summary, a pairing of short words, to dictate the entirety of a life? 

I know the morbidity is suffocating at this point but I've managed to slither myself into this dark place. I worry that lives are too expendable. Memorialize by a $0.25 newspaper and a good picture, a room of suffering people. 

I'm just surrounded by the constant flow if comments of people assuming they have a sum of me. Assuming they will know my feelings  my behaviors. My thoughts. My mind reaches into the darkest depths of this falsehood. 

I'll lose sleep over it. 

I'll fear that I'm caught up in becoming this mask of someone else. This chameleon enveloped completely in what people WANT to see. That no one would care to get closer. People accept face value. Clutch it and pray that complications never arise. 

Knowing my story is being told. Knowing my hardest hardships are being displayed publicly. Who is there? Who reads?  

Who stands up aside from the morbid curiosity of my struggles?  Or cheap  entertainment?  

I know I'm just crawled up in my mind right now but I'm struggling with the dimensions of all of this. The simplicity. 

When a life burns out. Who cares to KNOW more than the face? Of anyone ever? 

Who has that courage?  That time?

Healing and Dealing

Sorry readers for being so in and out lately.
I feel so energy zapped right now.  Terrible twos is in full swing.

Anyways, back on track.

So I've just had this tiny wrinkled Benjamin Buttons baby and he's been med flighted to a hospital about 45 mins away.  About 16 hours after my emergency c-section, the Dr. comes in the room.  I was in horrible pain and I felt clammy and awful but I smiled and lied.  Soon I was discharged and headed to see my baby. 

The neonatal staff was amazing. They made me up a room to stay in just down the hall from where jude lay sleeping.  I could go see him anytime that I wanted to. And I did.  I put my hands in the small port holes on his box and laid my hand on his little orange back covered in fuzz.  I cried. I loved him so much and hadn't been able to hold him yet.  He got better as the days went by. 

The entire time I was there I felt this undeniable vague feeling that I "didn't feel good".  I was weak and exhausted. I couldn't eat or sleep. The worst part was the horrible consistent cough. If I laid down I felt like I couldn't get a breath down.  The nurses in the unit urged me to go down to the emergency room but I couldn't leave my baby.  What if something happened and I wasn't there?

After 7 days I finally got hold him.  His weight was hardly noticeable.  His little body plugged into IVs and wrapped in a blanket in my arms felt golden.  I loved him with every ounce of my soul.  He was beautiful to me.  He opened one small blue eye and stared at me. I kissed his little hands and his little feet and felt whole.

My superhero baby made it out of neonatal 3 months premature at a whopping 4 pounds in 11 days.
I took him home that morning and coughed all day long.  My mother finally convinced me to go to the hospital at about 9pm.  In triage they rushed me to the back and began sticking me with needles and shoving oxygen masks over my face.

My mother just stood looking terrified holding the car seat carrier with a tiny baby sleeping soundly.  As the strong pain medications flooded my body I began losing all thoughts of the seriousness of the situation.  I lived in the shining flow of opiate illusion. It felt lovely. Like laying on clouds covered in butterflies.

The rest is an absolute blur.  I was put into a chemically induced coma and onto a ventilator.  I had severe congestive heart failure and kidney failure. My gallbladder was full of stones.  My kidneys had stopped filtering calcium at some point and my organs were partially calcified.  It was a total shutdown.

I was out for 6 weeks.  My mother took over the care of my son. When I awoke I cried and cried. I had missed so much.  But I held him in my arms the day I got out and loved him like I had never skipped a moment. 

A living baby, a new heart beats, and terror unfolds

Okay readers. Sorry I've been kinda incognito lately.  I've been on hibernation vacation for the past few days.

So lets continue on with the watered down- bullet point life story.
So I'm laying in a hospital bed, blind from over-high blood pressure, and a singular thought pounds into my mind with every bump of my pulse. "dead baby, dead baby, dead baby."

I'm having mild hallucinations of a grotesque baby corpse exiting my body old school and planning my heroic stand off with nurses to hold him for days.
Its really quite horrific. But you can't control your own mind.

Soon I'm rushed into the OR. head swimming from delightful drugs.  Belly tumbling from a mixture or said delightful drugs and a turkey club.
My mother goes into the OR with me.  A nurse asked me to hug her while another administers the spinal block. 

Fast forward one horrific half hour and my mother is spattered in partially digested turkey and I'm listening to the doctor commentate the procedure of doing a hip bone to hip bone c section extraction when the baby swims up too far. 

And suddenly a relief washed over me. My baby swam up. A dead baby doesn't swim. My baby was ALIVE. A love filled me that I had never felt before. One that I didnt believe I could feel. 

A few morphine coma moments passed with patchy memories and dreamy recollections. My mother crying and smiling, a nurse urging me to look right for a quick peek at the tiny still orange infant and the bleak silence of not hearing that "I'm a healthy baby" cry. 

And again with the push of morphine I was out again. 

I awoke in my hospital room with my brother next to me. Absently clicking away on some handheld gaming system. I silently stared at my mother in the corner. With tear filled eyes she said "he's beautiful". I croaked "alive?"  She just nodded, a quick flash of worry in her eyes. 

Soon they rolled a big glass box into the room containing a tiny (3 pound) orange fuzzy little old man. Wires and hoses plugged into his tiny body. His eyes taped shut, still and unmoving. The only indication of life was the monotone beeping of the many monitor screens attached to his box. 

I filled with dread. My heart shook. My mind raced. I felt my heart breaking. For this child who had morphine before milk. 

Who would soon ride in a helicopter before he rode in a car.