the pneumonia anniversary

A year ago to­day, I went to the ER think­ing I was just go­ing for my stan­dard neb­u­liz­er treat­ment be­cause I was hav­ing an asth­ma at­tack. Sev­er­al hours lat­er, I was ad­mit­ted into the hos­pi­tal be­cause I had pneu­mo­nia in my right lung.

What I re­mem­ber most about the or­deal (and those of you who know the full sto­ry know just how shit­ty it was), was how scared and lone­ly I felt. SO. DAMN. LONE­LY. I kept hop­ing some­one would come by and vis­it, or that my ass­hole boyfriend would at least call or break char­ac­ter and maybe sur­prise me with flow­ers in my room … ANY­THING to make me feel like I mat­tered. I was scared to death be­cause I had no voice (lit­er­al­ly) to ad­vo­cate for my­self with; my con­di­tion was so bad that I had to have oxy­gen and breath­ing treat­ments every two hours in­stead of the rec­om­mend­ed four; and that end­ed up af­fect­ing my heart, which, for those of you who don’t know, is some­thing that has been touch and go for me since be­fore birth. I was born with a heart mur­mur and was on med­ica­tions most of my child­hood, and while I have skat­ed by sans meds dur­ing my teens and adult life, I do feel my heart symp­toms every damn day. I just don’t talk about it.

So, I was scared I was go­ing to die, scared be­cause my cat, Stu­art, was alone and I hadn’t left him enough food and wa­ter to sur­vive a few days with­out me, scared that if I did die and peo­ple went to get Stu, they’d see that I hadn’t washed my dish­es or fold­ed my laun­dry (you get scared about dumb shit when you’re dy­ing, lol), scared that I would lose the job I had just start­ed (I did) … But most of all, I was scared to go through all of this alone. So painful­ly, pa­thet­i­cal­ly ALONE.

Those of you who know me best know that I ADORE my alone time; but, like any­one with feel­ings, I hate be­ing lone­ly. They’re two to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent things. But this time, my alone­ness height­ened my lone­li­ness, and for the first time, I want­ed some­one, ANY­ONE to just be with me. To call me. To show that I mat­ter more than just on­line. Don’t get me wrong… my on­line com­mu­ni­ty was ex­treme­ly sup­port­ive and car­ing, and as I scroll through all the pic­tures and words of en­cour­age­ment, I smile with love and grat­i­tude at the out­pour­ing of concern.

But on­line was where it stayed. And the longer I sat in that bed — wheez­ing, watch­ing lame TV, charg­ing my crap­py phone with a nurse’s charg­er that wasn’t long enough to al­low for real use, so that I had to twist my­self into an odd pret­zel shape to make sure the damn thing was charg­ing, while not yank­ing out my IV – the more I re­al­ized that I wasn’t im­por­tant enough to a lot of peo­ple I thought cared about me. And that hurt SO. DAMN. BAD.

I be­gan to won­der if I just was the type of per­son that peo­ple only like on the sur­face, but nev­er want to be real friends with; then I quick­ly re­mem­bered that the peo­ple who WOULD have come to vis­it me, to bring me flow­ers, to tell the nurs­es that I need­ed Sal­me­terol vs. Al­buterol so that I could breathe but not fuck up my heart – all of those peo­ple lived nowhere near me. That helped, but didn’t … to know that there are peo­ple who do love me, but don’t live close enough to me to help me when I need­ed it most.

I did have one friend who fi­nal­ly did stop by to pick up my keys, go to my place, and feed my sweet lit­tle StuKit­ty, and for that, I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful. And Jodi, my dear friend of so many years, was kind enough to come get me late one night, so that I could go home and re­cov­er in peace, be­cause the set up I had at the hos­pi­tal was only go­ing to bring on a ma­jor shin­gles at­tack. For her kind­ness, and all the ones she’s shown me through­out our many years of friend­ship, I shall also be eter­nal­ly grateful.

And mom … She could­n’t af­ford to leave her job to come be with me, but she was my biggest source of com­fort and sup­port. Al­ways has been, and I love her for that.

In the end, I was the one who ad­vo­cat­ed for my­self through writ­ten notes to the hos­pi­tal staff or shrieked whis­pers (took for­ev­er to get my voice back). I was the one who made them switch my meds, I was the one who con­vinced them that dis­charg­ing me WAS the right thing to do, be­cause of my au­toim­mune con­di­tion and the 72 hours I’d been with­out sleep (and we all know that rest is the most im­por­tant thing when re­cov­er­ing from pneu­mo­nia & heart is­sues). I did it all by my­self, as usu­al, as I’ve been trained to do. I’m lucky that my mom raised me to be the type to fend for her­self, to be strong enough to sur­vive on my own, how­ev­er dif­fi­cult the strug­gles of life may be.

But what I re­al­ized is that that very strength, that in­de­pen­dence, that abil­i­ty to take care of every­thing my­self, makes oth­ers think I don’t need any­one. And that couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth.

Strong peo­ple, strong WOMEN, are still hu­man. We still have feel­ings, we still need sup­port­ive friends. We still need love. There’s this com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that if you can han­dle it all by your­self – ES­PE­CIAL­LY if you’re a woman who loves her in­de­pen­dence – that you should be left alone, be­cause, “Well, she can han­dle it.” Yeah, I KNOW I can, and I know that’s what you ad­mire about me most. But that doesn’t mean I can’t use a hug every now and then, or a phone call so I can HEAR someone’s ac­tu­al voice and not just read a text or Face­book post. Last year’s pneu­mo­nia and heart or­deal made me the most scared I have ever felt in my en­tire life. Be­cause I was alone, and I felt like no one ei­ther cared enough, or be­lieved that I was vul­ner­a­ble enough to need someone.

I guess what I’m try­ing to say is… please don’t for­get about us strong, in­de­pen­dent types. It’s easy to brush off our lat­est crises by say­ing, “It’s okay, I know you can han­dle it, you al­ways land on your feet.” Like I’ve al­ready said, that is true, but we still need you and your sup­port. We still need more than just a pass­ing “Rah Rah Rah!” cheer, while we floun­der around, try­ing to solve the is­sue. Please be there for us, like we are for you.

This is some­thing I’ve want­ed to say for a year. But it took me a full twelve months to fi­nal­ly put into words what I’d been feel­ing, with­out break­ing down into a sob­bing mess. I’m tear­ing up as I write this any­way, as I re­mem­ber the pain, the bruis­es from botched IVs, the in­abil­i­ty to breathe, the hor­ri­ble hos­pi­tal or­deal, the aw­ful breakup (though that was the best thing that came out of all that, lol), the fear, that aw­ful, all-con­sum­ing fear… I’m still not over it, I guess.

But I’m alive — thank­ful­ly, hap­pi­ly alive. And I’ve re­placed tox­ic, un­nec­es­sary, fake ‘friend­ships,’ with new, bud­ding friend­ships with in­tel­li­gent, cre­ative, pas­sion­ate peo­ple I can re­al­ly re­late to. I’ve been wait­ing for that most of my adult life! So, it’s def­i­nite­ly get­ting better.

Just don’t for­get us strong folk. We may seem like we’re built of im­pen­e­tra­ble steel, but we’re not. Try us. We’ll still let you in.
 
 

—kim­ber­ly a. morales

Flom­mist Kim­ber­ly A. Morales is a food and well­ness blog­ger, and pa­tron saint of cats. Copy­right © 2017 Kim­ber­ly A. Morales. Foto by mehallo.

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