Hallucinations

After a week in the ICU the hospital decided to move me onto the Trauma floor.

( this was in the ICU before they moved me)

Before doing that though they decided to see if they could get me into an upright position since I had been flat on my back this whole time. So they had this table that they strapped me onto and then it slowly raised me into a standing position. They were hoping that by doing this my intestines and all my internal organs that had been damaged would fall back into place a start working properly. That was one of the most painful things I have experienced. The funny thing, was because of the drugs, I wasn’t really aware of what they were doing, and my memories of this are a little different then what actually happened. In my mind I thought they were strapping me to this giant round wooden board, like the ones you see on TV where they tie someone to it and shoot arrows at them. I thought they had tied me to something like this and then all of a sudden they begin spinning me. It was awful, but I realize now that no actual spinning was going on, it was just my extreme dizziness and the fact that it was the first time I had been upright. After I made it through that ordeal then I was finally moved into a new room and began my stay on the Trauma floor. 

( this ones a little fuzzy, but this was them moving me onto the trauma floor)

Before my accident I used to watch movies and occasionally you would see someone hallucinating because of drugs or something and I would always wonder at how it was portrayed. Sometimes they could have face to face conversations with people that weren’t real, sometimes they saw the weirdest most random things and I never believed it. I always though that maybe it was dramatized for television, because how could you really see something that clear and real? I just didn’t fall for it. Since then I have learned better.

The Sunday they were going to move me then I had some family come and see me. They came in and came over to my bed, and we began talking. I had finally been able to have my breathing tube removed so now I could actually talk. They were standing to the right side of my bed and as I was visiting them I became aware of voices that sounded to my left and in another room. There were sliding glass doors to my left that led out onto a patio and one of them had been left open and sunlight was streaming through. My brother and my dad were sitting out there at a picnic table laughing and talking. I remember wishing I could go out there and join them. I said something to the people I was visiting with about going out onto the patio and seeing what all the fun was about. They just stared at me blankly and politely smiled. I thought their reaction a little weird but didn’t think much of it at the time. Well further into my hospital stay when I had been moved somewhere else then I came back down to the ICU to see my room. When we walked in I looked at everything and the first thing I said was, “Where’s the patio?” I looked around the room and there was not even a hint of a patio. No sliding doors, no picnic table, nothing. It was so strange because I had felt the sunlight, actually felt its warmth on my skin, and saw it shining through the window. I had listened to the conversation and laughter and it had all been so real. To think that it had all been in my head was very shocking. It made me wonder how many other of my memories were just something my mind had created.

Another time I lay in bed and my nurse came in and gave me my hourly dose of pain meds. After she left then I realized I was actually sitting up in a chair by the door. As I sat there then all of a sudden millions of  tiny hands and fingers began crawling all over my body. Up and down, all over my face, in my hair everywhere. Millions of them. It was the weirdest sensation and I remember wishing it would go away and saying something to my mother who was in the room with me but she never acknowledged that I was speaking to her so I think maybe it was only in my mind that I had talked to her, and of course i wasn’t actually sitting in a chair, but still in my bed.

Another time then my sister was in the room with me and she was talking to me and I said to her, “Where’s Rhoda?” and she said, “Rhoda who?” And I answered, “Our sister Rhoda, why hasn’t’ she come to see me?” She just looked at me quite blankly.

I don’t have a sister named Rhoda. Never have. And I actually realized that a little bit after saying it, I couldn’t make sense in my mind why I had thought that or even said it but somehow I knew it wasn’t quite right. That feeling of not being in control of your own mind is very disconcerting. I have never felt anything like it, and hope to never again.

Another time then the same sister came into my room and she was asking me about my room transfer and congratulating me for getting my breathing tube and some other things out. I said, “Yeah I got them out, that’s why they let me go home.” She just looked at me and raised her eyebrows. I thought about what I said for a moment, I looked around me at the machines in my room and at my hospital bed, and then it clicked and I said slowly, “Except i’m not exactly home.” And of course everyone laughed and got a kick out of it. I even laughed. It is funny when you think about it. The only thing that’s not really funny is my genuine confusion. I hated not being able get my facts straight.

I have always been a more shy and introverted person. I don’t say what I think a lot of times and i’m not much of a conversationalist when put on the spot, especially by strangers. I was completely different in the hospital. I don’t know if it was the drugs or the bump to my head. But either way I became very talkative. Sometimes even saying things that were probably not that appropriate. If it came into my head I said it. I remember sometimes when people would come to visit then I would carefully and purposefully keep my mouth shut and not say anything because I was afraid of saying something that I shouldn’t. I didn’t know what was proper to say and what wasn’t. My mother was always gasping in shock at my comments and I would say, “Is that not something I should say?” and she would shake her head. At least I made for some pretty good entertainment. Especially for family that wasn’t used to me saying much at all.

That’s one of the things I greatly appreciated though. I felt free to say whatever I wanted. It was like my whole life I never talked and all of a sudden I could. All of a sudden I wanted to. Like I had this continuous flow of words and I just wanted to talk and talk and get them all out. Thankfully that didn’t change much after getting out of the hospital. Yes, I know what is appropriate and socially acceptable to say now, but I still talk more then I ever did. I still have my shy moments, I still lean more to the introverted side, but I feel more free to talk and express myself better then I ever did, and everyday I try to do it more and more.

Auras and Scalpel Knives

All my life I have always been interested in stuff like auras, personality types, body language, and so forth. I have always wished I had some special power to see the future, to look at someone and be able to see stuff about them without actually knowing them. I feel like I am quite perceptive and am in tune with a lot of things but I never considered that I had the power to actually see things. I have heard that with near-death experiences that you pick up on a lot more of these kinds of things, it will even enhances what skills, if any, that you already have in these areas and sometimes will even allow you to perceive or see paranormal things.

One day my sister-in-law came to see me in the ICU. I remember opening my eyes and she was standing on the right side of my bed, but I could not see her at all. All I could see was this thick, dark, dense, cloud that was standing where her voice was coming from. I remember she didn’t say much but I was overcome by this intense and overwhelming emotional feeling of sadness. I stared at that dark mass that completely covered her and I thought, “Why is she so sad?” I couldn’t figure out why. And then a couple days later she came to visit me again and she came walking into the room and was bubbly and happy and said “Hi Han! You look so much better!” and she was almost glowing not quite with a yellow color but close and I remember thinking at how dramatically different the two emotions were.

Another time my brother was staying with me and as I was laying there I opened my eyes and looked at him and he was surrounded by a clear red color. I say clear because it was so much lighter then the denseness that had been around my sister-in-law. This red was bright and it completely surrounded him and even spread out a quite a ways from him. It didn’t cover him like the black I had seen, only surrounded him. I remember looking at it but not thinking much about it. It wasn’t until I got out of the hospital that I started to wonder about it. What was it that I had seen? I came to the conclusion that it must have been an their auras. What else could it have been?

I don’t see auras now and I haven’t seen them since that first week in the hospital but I wish I still could. I wished a lot of times that I would be able to do cool stuff like sense the future, but I can’t. I do feel like it has enhanced a few things in my life, but other then that, I have no special psychic abilities that I am aware of.

Another odd experience from the ICU was when I woke up during surgery. I remember waking up and I was not in my hospital room but somewhere white. Everything was stark white, the walls, floor, sheets everything. I was lying on a bed and realized that I wasn’t exactly clothed, and I didn’t have a sheet to cover me either. I have always been a very modest person and so this was very shocking and quite embarrassing for me. Especially when I realized there was a doctor sitting by my right side. There were some kind of tools on the table beside him and I watched him, very confused and quite scared, not knowing at all what was going on or what was going to happen. I watched him and in my mind I thought that he was sitting there sharpening his knife. Now I don’t know much about surgery, I don’t know if the doctors sit there and sharpen their knives right before they cut into you, or what exactly goes on. I was confused and probably half drugged and so it appeared to me that he was sharpening his knife. I wondered what he was going to do with it and then i mentally gulped as I imagined the ways he could use it on me. Yes I have an overactive imagination, but in this situation who could blame me? I picture all kinds of things in my mind, and so by the time he was ready to proceed I was quite terrified.  I don’t know what surgery it was, or what he was doing, but I remember watching as he picked up his knife, or whatever it is that doctors use for surgery and then he slowly lowered it to what I remember in my mind as my leg, or around that area, and began cutting. I watched as he cut and the blood started to run and then I don’t remember anything else.

When I think back on that memory now I think its kind of a cool one, even though I was half scared out of my mind at the time. I think that goes for a lot of things though. What ever we are facing at the moment, there will always be a time when we can look back on the experience and say, “I made it through. I survived.” And sometimes, in hindsight, its never as bad as you thought it was at the time.

Love Heals all Wounds

In my hospital room there was a white board hanging on the wall at the foot of my bed. every time I would open my eyes it was one of the first things I would see. People started leaving me little messages on it, and pretty soon my mother bought some poster board and hung it on the wall and people covered it in writing. Several times a day I would ask my sister to read aloud all the messages. I only remember her doing it once but because of the brain damage then I couldn’t remember so I would ask her to read it over and over again, and i would smile and laugh at all the same places, as if i never had heard them before.  One day my sister-in-law printed off all the messages that people had been posting to my wall on facebook and brought them to the hospital for me to read. I was amazed as I lay there and listened to her read page, after page, after page of all these loving, and sometimes witty comments left by all kinds of people. After she finished I said softly, “People   actually care.” It was incredible the feeling of overwhelming love that I felt from everyone. And not just people I knew. A lot of the facebook posts were people that I don’t have anything to do with on a regular basis. Just people I may have met a few times in my life. And some messages and visits were from people that I have never met at all. I began receiving all kinds of caring texts, flowers, cards and teddy bears. I kept every single one. My room was packed with pictures and balloons. Sometimes I like to get out all the cards and re-read them, re-read the poster board messages. It reminds how much I am actually loved. From the motivational ones the “we believe in you, you are strong and we love you,” ones, to the sweet ones, the, “we love you and are continually praying for you” ones, and even the humorous ones, the, “break a leg,” and ” you’re my hero, but not the kind that can fly” ones. I read them over and over. And every time it makes me cry. I don’t know how to explain the feeling of being overwhelmed with love. I used to believe that I was alone in the world, that no one would care if I died, that no one even noticed me and that I was just a loner and would have to get used to living my life as such. And all of a sudden I realized that none of that was true. The proof was in the care I received, it was in the visitors I had everyday, it was in the messages on my walls, and the faces of everyone around me.

Between my family and some of my friends i had two people stay the night with me every night. EVERY night. My entire hospital stay, there was always someone there. My mother was there every single day, at night she would go home and trade off with the two people that had volunteered to stay that night. My dad came up every single day, my siblings were there constantly, I had visitors almost almost everyday. The amount of support was incredible.

One night, then my brother and sister were staying with me, it was maybe 3 or 4 days after the accident and I remember I woke up and opened my eyes and there was my brother, at the side of my bed, his chin resting in his hands as he leaned onto my bed and just watched me. I will always remember that moment because i could see his love written so clearly all over his face, and I remember closing my eyes again so I wouldn’t cry. I seems like just a little thing when you think about it. But for me it wasn’t. Our family has never been one to show much emotion. A lot of us never say things like, “I love you.” And we are not natural born huggers. So for me I never really knew how I fit into the family, and to open my eyes and see him there, so obviously concerned for me, really touched me. Not only that but he would hold my hand too. A lot of people in the beginning would hold my hand. I’m not a very touchy person and usually stuff like that is quite awkward for me but in this case I needed it, I wanted it. Because I couldn’t move or anything then I felt like holding onto to someones hand was my connection to the world. It was a way that I could hold on to my sanity if you will. It was like somehow by holding their hand I could be myself again.

You could hear some of the other patients down the hallways calling for someone to help them, some never even got visitors. It was just them alone, in their rooms, waiting to get better. I cant think of anything more depressing then that. The nurses even sometimes remarked on how cheery and inviting my room was. And it really was. I think every bit of that helped in speeding up my recovery, and i’m so grateful to all my family and friends and even strangers who shared their love and with me. Love heals all wounds and I truly believe that the love and support of family and friends is almost or even more effective then any medicine prescribed by a doctor.