The Seated View

I'm so glad to be here. I wanted to write something for today. One year ago, on March 30, 2016, things went south after I was extubated , I flatlined, but through some highly skilled intervention, I survived. That is one hell of a miraculous gift. Although I am normally full of words about the experience, the aftermath,, and all the feels involved, I find myself  oddly speechless on this, my first Zombie Birthday. All I know is that I am so grateful. So instead of writing a whole lot of words basically e xpressing that I don't know what to say, I thought I'd instead share some photos from the past year. Life. Isn't it wonderful? And this... well. It's my Zombie Birthday, after all. I had to. Thanks, Alex.  

Some people call it their re-birthday. This is more fun A year ago today the seeds of my becoming a zombie were sown. Well, truth be told they were probably sown a few days to a week before that. I f we are going to stay in this metaphor, a year ago today was the moment of conception. Are zombies born or made? A question for another time. Moving on! A year ago today, The Boy and I played hooky from work and went to the Royal Ontario Museum to see the Wildlife Photography exhibit. We’d spent the early parts of the weekend together, but he felt sick so I sent him back home. By Monday he was 85% back to normal — he claims he has a weak constitution, but it’s ironclad — and off we went. Halfway through the exhibit, I started feeling like I was coming down with something. I remember us sitting on a bench, each eating a small box of raisins, me feeling kinda crappy, him feeling kinda tired, and both of us feeling kinda underwhelmed by that year’s exhibit. And then we ...

This is what it feels like to have croup: Croup is terrifying. Every breath is an effort. It starts by feeling vaguely short of breath, progresses to being aware of every breath, and then you start feeling the muscles and tendons in your neck as you take each breath and you begin to hear a noise called stridor as you breathe in. Oddly enough, breathing out is not an effort, but things get worse when you lie down. With each stage, the panic rises, your body instinctively kicking into hyper survival mode. It is not right to feel the effort that goes into breathing. You can’t talk without coughing and your cough sounds like the bark of a seal. As the swelling intensifies, you have to take a long deep breath in to have sufficient air in which to cough. You can’t physically do the sniff it takes to smell something or get rid of a bit of moisture in your nose the structures in your body have changed. You can’t cry because that requires breath and a movement of your throa...