so, as many of you know, i went through yet another drama involving that pesky-yet-essential left lung of mine. and i am now sitting on my futon in my cozy noho apartment, typing to y'all, so please know, before the story ends, no matter how scary it gets, that it does end probably as well as it could have.
so, a couple of minutes before it turned to midnight and began my birthday, i had my first ever ambulance ride. i'd started coughing up blood, and was having trouble breathing. after calling 911, of course, it stopped as suddenly as it started, just before the nice policeman arrived. and the nice fireman. and the nice paramedics. (i guess there's not a lot of action for the third watch in good ole noho...) so i was taken to the ER, where i had another very short episode, which landed me in the hospital overnight. it was decided to start my chemo right away. no big deal. i was clear for two weeks.
then, on tuesday, i woke up, got dressed, got my coffee, went to work, gossiped with dana for a few minutes, then went to the bathroom. as i was washing my hands, i coughed. and it was bright red. "fuck," i said. i called the doctor's office, and they told me to go back to the ER. so i called meredith to pick me up, and she was there in a flash. when i got the the ER, i assumed that it would stop on its own again. after about an hour, i'd lost a lot of blood, and was informed that they would have to transfer me to baystate hospital in springfield, and they were going to knock me out so that they could intubate me. the last thing i remember is meredith telling a nurse to please be careful with my vocal chords, because i'm a singer. (meredith wins the award for greatest bandmate/ friend ever. the nurse sassed her back, but she'll get hers. cause you just don't mess with texas.:)
the next thing i remember, i can't move. i hear nurses talking about another patient's diarrhea. i fall asleep. i wake up. i still can't move. i hear my mother's voice, asking if i can hear her. the nurses say yes, that i'm paralyzed, but it's only temporary. i fall asleep. i wake up. i discover that i can move my tongue, but only my tongue. nurses pry my eyes open and shine a flashlight in them. i fall asleeep. i wake up. i hear my mother, father, and brother, and the red sox game on the tv. i try again to move. i can move my arm slightly. soon i can open my eyes, and my family notices. over the course of a few hours, i become fully awake. i FREAK out totally, because the tube was hugely irriatating me. once i had the tube removed, things went uphill fast. i was in the ICU for a night, then spent another night on the cancer floor. i basically gave every doctor hell (including a funny incident where i harassed a particularly nerdy intern, telling him to get the tube "the hell out of my ladybusiness," and to "let me out of there, asap- STAT!"), until they released me on friday afternoon.
since then, i've been filled in on all the fun details of how i almost died and how they saved my life and all. the details are a bit too freaky to repeat. and i'll be doing radiation for the next 3 weeks, which is much less annoying than chemo anyways.
so that's what i've been up to. thank you to everyone for the thoughts and prayers and all. as it gets proved over and over again, i am a very lucky girl.
