| 2/8/09 Today is one year since I went in the hospital and almost died... a year ago today I woke up, there was no food in the refrigerator; I thought I could make it to the store. On the way I sideswiped a bus and a car...not able to deal with that, I went shopping anyway...when I came out of the grocery store, there were 3 police cars surrounding my car...I am fortunate they were all police woman. (If they were policemen I am sure that I would have ended up in jail) They asked me if I owned the car and I said yes...the front tire was flat...I had no idea...once they realized how sick I was, they decided not to arrest me...she drove me home and told me to get someone to come back with me and have the car towed home...I called AAA and that happened...sometime shortly after that I went delirious and have no memory...Moshe called me about 4p and told me to go to the hospital, but I said no....My neighbor found me at 1a in the garage wearing only my iPod earphones... they rushed to the hospital...if I had not been found, I would have been dead by morning.... What happened then was told to me after…the next thing I remember, I was having a dream? I was in a lit cave…there were voices of Jewish older woman chanting…my partner was dying and they were chanting over his body…I was in despair…I did not want to live without him…I decided that I would die too…As I was laying on this rock, I began to will myself to die…the woman were praying over me…I began to feel peace as I knew the life energy was slipping away…As I left my body and began moving a way I felt connected to spirit and very peaceful…Life had been good and now it was time to go… Switch…I am on a concrete slab, but this time it is like a science fiction movie…there half walls everywhere, and there are people wandering around…I have the sense that I am in a futuristic hospital…I am lying there but no one is paying attention to me…people wandering around, one person that I knew, but everyone is ignoring me…I am sick but cannot get help…I then realize that if I don’ t ‘shit’ real soon that I am going to die. I extubate myself, I was tied down to the bed, because I had been flailing and fighting my breathing tube. But I pulled it out and now I am awake…not knowing where I am…looking out and seeing the sign that says ICU/CCU slowly coming to awareness that I am in a hospital and alive….not wanting to be alive, because my partner is dead…I look over and there is a board and it says “happy Valentine’s Day” 5 days since I was conscious of anything….I ask the nurse where is Moshe, they said he was eating and he would be back…they handed me a Valentine’s card…I didn’t believe he was alive…I was scared, disoriented…I read the card, convinced that they were trying to trick me…some time passes, he walks in…I start sobbing…he grabs my hand…he says it is okay…”you have a lot to cry about”…I sob, I look at him and I realize I came back because we still had so much life to still live with each other”…people start coming in to see me…he starts making phone calls...people asking how I am doing…he says he’s awake you want to talk to him…he is joyous…I am talking to one person after another, my mother, my mother- in-law…my brother…people keep showing up…I am crying, I have an oxygen mask to help me breath…weakly speaking to those who call… a group of people come in…we are singing…show tunes…spiritual songs…I am being sassy….then it is 9p…he needs to go home and get some sleep…but before he goes he tells me what went on in the “real world”…Tells me that Obama has won every election since super Tuesday, I again a sense of what is like to lose time… After the incident with the car…after I had the car towed home…somewhere about 2P…I lost consciousness…He called me at about 4P from Denver…tried to convince me to go the hospital…I said I would go the next day…1a my neighbor finds me…1st miracle…calls an ambulance…takes me to the closest hospital…they say I have had a heart attack and they transfer me to another hospital…finally they diagnosed me with pneumonia that had gone septic…I would have been dead by morning if my neighbor hadn’t found me…Moshe flies in from Denver…if we hadn’t lived in San Francisco, they would not have considered him my next of kin…miracle…my brother who is a pulmonary and critical care specialist flies down from Tacoma and keeps the doctors from making a mistake with my care…another miracle…I don’t even know he has been there… That first night was very hard…I was very scared…realizing that I had almost died…when I closed my eyes I saw light…I fought with God all night telling him that he could not take me now…had this thought…I was afraid that if I fell asleep I would die…called Moshe at 4a asked him to come back, he said he would be there in the morning…I cannot kiss anyone but Moshe…get my lips pursed all night…could not sleep…the nurses put on TV…it was the night that the man slaughtered all the people at a school…I could not watch it…they turned it off…later I started watching again…from then on…I could not tell you what really happened and what I was hallucinating…the nurse put on a particular channel…and everything I saw had an underlying gay theme…even all the commercials…I was laughing hysterically…thought I heard the nurses laughing too…then they put on the radio…COIT 98.5…all of a sudden it was like all the music lined up with all the lovers I had in my life…it started with my first love Karl, who died of Aids,…Diana Ross came on with a vengeance…songs from the era of the mid-seventies…I felt all the love that I had felt for him then…and there was this wondrous feeling of completion…there was even a song that I know now never existed that played over and over…it had a Western Gay Cowboy feel…and it ended with a man called “Karl”…then their was music for my second lover, Eddie, who also died of AIDS…now it was Barbara Streisand and the music that even led to our breakup…again this feeling of completion…on comes Rick Astley and my relationship with David is honored and the pain seems to disappear…there is an acceptance of the end of our relationship…one by one the men in my life are honored…then it comes to Moshe the one I love now…no desire for the past…. Some time I am told that Kaiser wants me moved immediately…Kaiser, who never diagnosed my illness…I am paranoid and afraid that they want to kill me…my birds, I must see my birds before I am moved…my fever comes back, I slip into dreaming again…there are nurses and doctors around me…they are sets of lovers…I know that one has been abusing the other in both relationships…they know that I know but they are there to take care of me…then I notice there is a big group of people…I cannot see but I know they are there…I have become like a wise sage, that teaches them…but whenever I tell them something that they know is true…they start laughing, they fall on the floor and laugh hysterically…everyone is there…my father is there…he has been dead 10 years but he is there…it is as if he had never died…I am so glad he is there…and all anger of the past disappears…l feel nothing but love for him…love flows through me…my mother, my brothers, my nieces, god-sons and their parents…everyone is laughing everyone I am telling truths to…some that are hard to hear…I feel love for everyone… Then they move me to Kaiser, I am dreaming that they go to my house for me to see my birds…but cannot see them…we get to Kaiser and I am angry and scared…it takes 6 nurses to hold me down…after some more nightmares, I wake up and I am well…ah, my spiritual choir director and one of the members come to sing with me…I can hardly sing because my lungs are weak…but it is one of the highlights of my waking time in the hospital…my recovery becomes evident by how well I can subsequently sing… Out of the hospital, I feel this sense of being close to God…it goes on for days turning into weeks…I go see my Rabbi, and ask her if these feelings stay…She says that Humans are basically lazy by nature, and the experience slips away…she says this is just the way things are…but if I treat this as if I had hit a bottom with an addiction…she says make as many changes as I can while I am motivated…She picks a Jewish prayer that is said for someone who has come back from the dead…she is sorry about the part that says that I have brought this on myself…I said that I fine…I can live with my part in this…my part that I had threatened to kill myself when times got really hard…now I was ready to choose life…on the way home I felt a lot of shame for something I had said to the Rabbi…ah, the biggest change I could make is to not judge myself…this also stayed with me for awhile…now it comes and goes… Blessed by so many friends visiting me while in the hospital…blessed by those who love me and care…blessed by the relationship that has taken me places I never dreamed of…blessed by life… A year later, the rabbi was right…and yet there are many things that have changed in my life…and continue to change…I can no longer throw away time…it becomes harder and harder to not live a healthy life and spend my time being of service to others… Death will come when it comes…for now I am alive. |
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Randy Weled, MFT
Marriage, Family Therapist
Marriage, Family Therapist
Golden Gate Counseling Center
Downtown San Francisco, CA
Randy Weled, MFT
Downtown San Francisco, CA
Randy Weled, MFT
Call or email today for a free
consultation: 415-834-1755
info@goldengatecounseling.com
consultation: 415-834-1755
info@goldengatecounseling.com
My Dance with Death
Mental Health Therapy and Counseling in My Office, by phone, or Webcam