It is the 15th night in ICU where I am apparently dying from some unknown auto-immune attack that has eluded every test they can think to run. My wife then by my side the whole time sleeping in a chair with her head resting next to me a pillow upon the hard, metal railing of the bed, night after night. I am stiff as a board, sweating buckets with two IV's now running full out and experiencing constant muscles spasms throughout my entire body and my vision is doubled as the muscles in my eyes have spasmed as well and unbeknownst to me at the time, I suffer from aphasia but the nurses and my wife have decided to keep this from me by pretending to understand me. I speak seemingly coherently in my own mind, but they here only unintelligible babbling and they feel that if I were to know this that it might effect me negatively and feel that I need every chance I can get.
"I think you would want to know, so I am telling you," My wife says, "the neurologist feels that you will not make it through the night. The attack continues and they just don't know what to do, David."
I tell her that I know she is not a believer but please understand there is no death, that is merely like walking from one room into another room. I go on to reassure here that we're in a pretty good place with a home that is paid for, two cars paid for and some money in the bank and that she will be okay and I will be with her to please trust in this and know that everything is okay and that I, of course, I have no fear of death. I am shocked when she smiles and shakes her head affirmatively smiling, and I am thinking OMG it's like a miracle and I feel so grateful that she who is so cynical about these things has turned this corner and I loose consciousness feeling this gratitude and, I guess, just prepared to die. I had been encouraged many times to "Fight" but have no fight in me and the whole time have just said "do what you will, Lord, I really don't care one way or another. It is a blessing that am not really in any physical pain, It is feeling that I do not have a body at all and am only some disembodied entity occupying this space in a bed in ICU in Lubbock, Texas, of all places.
I think before I fall asleep that I guess I am a Buddhist at heart, after all.
In this death dream on the fourteenth night in an ICU unite suffering from a sudden onset, catastrophic auto-immune attack, I can say that in some real measure “I” faced death. It was a kind of lucid dream in that I knew not only that I was dreaming but I knew that this was THE “death dream”. I knew, in the dream, that I was knocking on heavens door, as it were. No fear. That proverbial peace. I had been told only a few hours earlier before going to sleep that my prospects for surviving this night were not in my favor; that this auto-immune attack still continued and they knew not why or what it is even.
In the dream I am alone in an acorn boat – half an acorn, to be exact. Floating in the vast ocean bobbing up and down aimlessly at the mercy of this vast ocean and feeling at ease with this knowing that eventually I would wash up on a shore somewhere. In the dream, I kick back in the acorn boat that curves just so that I find it rather a comfortable place to relax. (In reality my body is stiff as a board muscle spasms are constant and I am pouring sweat as my own immune system attempts with great if misplaced good intentions to chew its way through my spinal cord at the brain stem) The acorn boat bobs up and down through days and nights as I watch peacefully the stars come up over head then the dawn and the hot noon day sun as one night passes into day and another day passes into night seemingly on and on …
I think very clearly laying back relaxing in my tiny acorn boat, hands behind my head, “I am not going to fight, Lord. If that's what I'm suppose to do, I don't know? But you decide. That's how I see this. I'm good with what you want here.”
I wake curtains open in ICU I can move my head a little was completely paralyzed from head to toe and the shaking has stopped and the sweating and I know that the attack is over. I see across the hall into two other rooms where ICU nurses work like angelic soldiers here and I think how someone else didn't make it through the night but I did. It is a strange and disorienting feeling. I know it was none of my own doing in it. I knew that this is merely the shore upon which I had washed up on. I can't say that I was not relieved and thankful to be alive, don't get me wrong. I thought clearly of the death dream and that little acorn boat and couldn't help but smile.
The Neurologist pops in laughing out loud when he sees me and I am touched by what seems like such genuine concern, "OMG David you are alive got to tell it you it was nip and tuck there for a minute, Bud, congratulations - the nurses got together when we realized the attack had stopped and made you wife go get a hotel room after 15 nights in ICU, she is beyond exhausted and we promised her that we'd take good care of you.
I said, Thank you, crying now.
The neurologist laughs again, "even the aphasia is gone this is great, David.
I say, what?
For the last week almost, as you deteriorated, you have had severe aphasia and your words were merely unintelligible babbling but we felt it best to keep it from you not wanting your spirits to drop in what was obviously a fight for your life -
That word again, "Fight" and I don't say anything but I think, "There was no fighting only acceptance".
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