Part Two: ICU is A Scary Place ...Also, Have a Pint of Blood - It's On the House!

The next thing I remembered was waking up, and thinking that maybe an hour had gone by but it was actually about a day later. Early Monday afternoon. I tried to talk, but I had to cough up this tube in my throat. My husband was there. And for a brief moment, I felt like I conquered a dragon. But that passed as soon as the reality hit me.  I had just gone through a pretty gnarly surgery and now I was hooked up to a million tubes and several machines.  

For several days and nights, I lay in the ICU. I could not sleep and started having these little hallucinations, seeing things out of the corner of my eye. Family came to visit and while I was glad to see them, but I also did not want them there. I hated that anyone had to see me like this.  Stupid pride, I suppose, but it is what it is. 

 I kept asking the nurses if I was dying. They kept reassuring me I was fine.  I really think that mentally I was on some sort of brink for those few days.  If the nursing staff were not so reassuring and patient, I think I might have cracked.

And then a funny thing happened.  Over the next few days, they would remove a machine, remove a tube, stop an IV...I was told that my body was responding very well and that I was being "weaned" off of everything.

At some point I  got a pint of someone's blood. I wonder who he or she was. I'd like to shake their hand.  That was the last fluid I received via an IV.  After that, I was free of tubes and being prepped to be shipped out of ICU.

I could not wait to get out of there.  It was only four days, but it felt like a month!