"The Time is out of joint"

And now, quite suddenly, I am flooded with sadness and anger. Now that I have been offered a few hours’ reprieve from the lines of oxygen and IVs, and it’s quiet and I can finally sit and think, I am angry.

I realize almost two weeks have gone by where my only thought and focus was on my next breath, next pain, and just simple survival.

Modern medicine has reduced us all to our primordial instincts. The night when my lung started to collapse and I had people surrounding me wanting to poke and prode when I was already fighting to stay alive and hurting horrendously, I understood the viciousness of a mother lion protecting her cubs. Every morning when dozens (I’m not kidding) of doctors and specialists and clinicians and nurses all began making their rounds through my door, I knew what it felt like to be just a “tough case.”

And I grieve. I grieve like no one will ever know, up here in this hospital room all alone. I grieve for an entire summer nearly sacrificed. Time: you simply cannot take it back. This experience has been the most life-altering experience of my life – one I won’t soon forget.