Here's What Happened 1

I'm going to try and break this up over the course of a few posts/days because I'd like for you guys to read it and it's not a short story.

At the end of July, I was home sick from my terrible temp job with a throw-up GI bug. I was actually feeling better than the previous days, but still had not managed to keep any food or liquid down, so I was taking it easy. Then I started puking again. Then I started fainting. As soon as my bf got home from work he took me to the local ER, where I was rushed back after passing out twice in the waiting area. He said it looked like I was having a seizure, but it felt like falling asleep. I saw them hang bag after bag of IV fluids, I struggled to stay awake, there were people rushing all around, I heard the phrase "go through your hips." Then I woke up and two weeks had passed, during which time I was shuttled between hospitals- first from the local joint up to Boston, then from there to Children's to be placed on an ECMO heart-lung device (don't google it, most of the images are babies and it's too sad) because they didn't have enough of them at the adult hospital, then back to the cardiac wing of the main hospital to be put on a biVAD (Ventrical Assist Device).

I didn't know it had been two weeks- due to the sedatives and wacky drugs I was on, coupled with the fact that my eyes couldn't focus on the whiteboard the date was written on, I was convinced months had passed. I was convinced of a lot of things those early hours; the first mental hurdle was figuring out what was real and what had not actually happened. I don't like thinking about those "dreams" because they were hyper-realistic and pretty awful. Apparently that type of nightmare is common with the medications (I found it incredibly interesting that many folks' involve the grocery store) but the things my own brain came up with were pretty unsettling.
The doctors and nurses -not to mention my own family, but more on them later- did not do a very good job of filling me in. I'm still finding out new details of what happened with my body while my brain was writing and filming a torture porn. I realize now I could have and should have asked more questions, but often I didn't know what I should be asking and sometimes I plain ol' didn't want to know the answer.

Eventually I was given the diagnosis of "idiopathic viral myocarditis." An unknown virus (probably my pukebug, but they couldn't make a match in what I imagine was a CSI-lookin' database of baddies) infected my heart, causing it to swell to the point where it couldn't pump enough blood to support me. My own super-healthy but misguided immune system tried to help by launching its own attach on the infected tissue, which only made things worse. That's why I was fainting- I thought it was dehydration from 3 days of yakking up everything I put in my mouth, but in reality not enough blood was reaching my brain.

The first night they lowered my sedation and took out my breathing tube they didn't let me know that I had pneumonia, which caused me to freak out because I couldn't breathe properly. I begged them to put the breathing tube back in, which they did for another day or two, despite the fact that they found it hugely unusual that someone wanted the tube back in. When I woke up for good that day in mid August, I had tubes coming out of my nose, neck, chest, arms, belly, hips, etc (can't think of a nice way to say "I had a pee catheter.")
Over the course of 2 weeks or so- it was hard to keep track of time- I lost most of the tubing except the arm IV and the BiVAD tubes. They found a fungal infection on one of the IVs, which gave me a wild fever. I remember hallucinating that there was another patient in the room with me. I imagined that we both had fevers and thought it was very strange how nobody acknowledged the other person in the room. Luckily I never mentioned them or my psych evaluation might not have gone as smoothly as it did.

Once the infection was under control, everyone was able to get back on track with figuring out a plan for my heart. Doctors told me that I might spontaneously get better but I might not; it was essentially a waiting game. Then they said I might get better, or I might get a new support device that would enable me to go home, or I might just need a new heart entirely. Then that it looked like I wasn't getting better, so I might get a new support device while I waited for a new heart or I might get a new heart without the middle step/major surgery of the "take-home" VAD. The last week of August, I signed the paperwork and was put on the waitlist for a heart transplant. I received a sealed letter confirming my placement a few days later.

At least I think that's what it was; I still haven't opened the damn thing.