It was Friday night, 9pm, and my heart and lung alarms went off for the second time. My sister Brenda and Aunt Julie who were gathered around me aborted their conversation mid-sentence. Brenda looked helplessly at the red flashing on the screens above me and then at me. There was nothing she could do but wait for the CCU nurse to come tearing into the room with emergency protocol, just as he had done a short while before.

The alarms blared on. Bren and Jules eyed each other silently, any words said would have been lost in the noise. No one came. Desperate to do something, Brenda rose and approached my bedside hoping to offer any kind of relief. Just then nurse Tom whipped back the curtain and quickly assessed the scene. Brenda immediately stepped back clearing the space between Tom and me. But Tom just stood there stock-still, hands on his hips. The machines blared on. Finally Tom began to move. And with the speed of garden snail he walked over to my monitors and reset the alarms. All relaxed as the room fell quiet once again. Tom whipped around and gave both Brenda and Julie a scolding look.

TOM: Ladies, if you two make the patient laugh hard enough that it sets off her emergency alarms one more time, I’m banning you both from the unit!!
BREN & JULES: Sooooorry.
TOM: And you, (to me) no more laughing!

I looked at him sheepishly over the top of my breathing mask. Tom smiled at them, winked at me, then headed for the door, pulling the privacy curtain closed behind him with a dramatic harrumph.

What a difference a day makes! Wednesday had been the day I totally tanked, and after throwing everything at me it was a wait and see whether my body was losing its fight against Legionnaires Disease. The doctors determined that if by Thursday morning I was no better they would have to put me into a medical induced coma and intubate me. Brenda had slept in my hospital room with me both Wednesday and Thursday nights making it clear to the nursing staff that since our entire family lived on the West Coast, she’d need to know immediately when/if it was time to get them on a plane and to my bedside. But Thursday morning my fevers ceased and the total deterioration of lungs haulted – prayers, drugs and time had prevailed. And here it was Friday, just 24 hours later, and though my emergency alarms were in fact wailing, it was for a completely different reason.

My Aunt Julie lived just 10 minutes away in Glen Rock and had visited me most evenings before Friday, but this night, this visit had a completely different feel. I was finally on the mend and the unspoken fear we had all held was gone, even the air in the room seemed lighter. I was breathing better though still on the breathing machine, and I sat there listening to Brenda and Julie chat with each other. I remember wanting so badly to take a shower and especially wash my hair when Jules looked over at me, smiled, and said with the utmost sincerity, “Your hair looks good, Gretchen.” From over the top of my thick breathing mask she must have seen me roll my eyes, so she explained, “No, really. That day in the ER, when you were so ill, I remember looking at you and thinking, “Gosh, even her hair looks sick!’ But it looks better now.”

Ok, it was just a silly thing to say, but what made it downright hilarious was that she was so completely and utterly sincere. She delivered it with the furrowed-brow seriousness of a medical diagnostician declaring me cancer free. I guess you had to be there, but I laughed and laughed and the sensation thereof was something I hadn’t known in what felt like years. Then Brenda was laughing, and eventually Julie, upon hearing her own words come back to her, started laughing, too. I laughed through my big breathing machine until tiny tears came out my eyes. I laughed so hard that night that I set off my emergency heart and lung alarms. Twice. But as you know, that is where this blog started.

Saturday and Sunday were the most tired I had ever felt in my entire life. Concerned, I told my nurse, and she said that was a good sign – my body was over the fear of dying/not breathing and was finally letting down. After 7 days, I finally got out of that chair and slept in the bed (at a 45 degree angle) By Monday morning, it was was graduation day: I was finally well enough to leave the Critical Care Unit.  It seemed apropros that I would have nurse Claudette on my final day in CCU since she had championed me on my very worst day that previous Wednesday. She was in charge of my transfer down to regular care, and (rock star that she is) she even arranged for me to have a private room on that floor. I overheard her telling the nurse manager that she was “sending down a gift,” and that they were to treat me well. Word got out that “The Sisters” (what we had come to be known as) were leaving the CCU, and they got my oxygen tank, monitors, and wheels ready to go. Brenda put the box of flowers/cards/balloons on my lap while she grabbed the various bags of clothes and sundries. The orderly had me wheeled nearly all the way down the long hall of the CCU before we noticed that Brenda was not behind us. He stopped my chair to wait, and I looked back over my shoulder for Bren. There in the doorway of my old room were Brenda and Claudette in a big embrace. When they pulled back, I saw that Brenda was crying. Claudette hugged her again hard as Brenda spoke softly to her and wiped the tears she was unable to contain The whole scene caught me off guard.

You see, Brenda had spent nearly all day, every day (and two overnights) from the moment I was brought into the ER to the 9 days I was in the Critical Care Unit. The only real emotion I saw on her was that flash of fear during my first coughing fit in the ER. Since then she had been calm and steady, one might even say downright causal, through all my diagnoses and procedures. I had apologized to her several times during the week for ruining our New York trip, the trip we had excitedly planned together back in February before I hit the road. And every time I apologized she’d respond saying, “This is right where I am supposed to be.” Moreover, as things got really really scary, she appeared totally unfazed by it, which touched on a secret fear I’d had since I was a little kid: that my big sister didn’t love me as much as I thought. I’ll explain. As the younger sister I always wanted to play with my big sister. I wanted dress like her, do my liquid eyeliner like her, and drive around with her cool friends in their Cabriolet. Most of the time Brenda tolerated me and even included me every now and then. But however irrational it sounds, the little sister in me always felt like I loved her way more than she loved me (I’ve heard this feeling is not uncommon among younger siblings). But after 9+ days in the hospital, there was my cool, nonchalant, older sister, uncontrollably cry-thanking the nurse who had truly been there, for both of us. As even-keeled as she is, I realized that Bren really had been terribly worried about me the whole time. But she had been right where she was supposed to be, she held her post (and my hand a few times), and she got me through the worst of it. My leaving the CCU was as much of a graduation day for her as it was for me. I guess now she, too, was finally letting down and letting her emotions out. And me? I felt like Sally Field the whole way down to the second floor, “My big sister loves me! She really loves me!”

I would sleep-drool-snore my way through the next three days while next to me Brenda sat and read for hours on her iPhone. The weather turned dangerously hot with heat stroke warnings all over New York City and the surrounding areas. Brenda was all too happy to be sitting in a comfy chair inside a nice air-conditioned hospital. A few of the nurses I’d had in the CCU stopped by to visit us at the ends of their shifts, they had been wanting to ask me about my road trip, I taught a few them how to get up on AirBnB. And in the evenings to pass the time, Bren and I watched a lot of “Law & Order” (gung-gung!). But ironically enough, fear AGAIN kept me awake those nights in the general care ward – a fact that surprised me the most.

When I was in the CCU, I had been unable to sleep for several days because my body wouldn’t let me. As the doctors explained my body was in total fight or flight mode struggling to breathe. Even if I had wanted to sleep, my body was unable to. But here in my comfy bed in the general care unit, exhausted and past the worst of it, I still couldn’t sleep – but not for any physical reason. When I was in the CCU, I had been hooked up to several heart and lung monitors that if anything had happened in the night, would alert the medical calvary. Moreover, the nurse-patient ratio was 3 to 1 and I had to have so many shots and drugs that nurses and techs were coming in to my room every 30 minutes. Here in the general care wing , I was done with my shots and nearly all my drugs, the nurse ratio was much larger and so maybe every 4 hours I’d have a nurse come take my vitals, etc. So as Brenda said goodnight to me and I settled myself into bed for the night I suddenly realized that I wasn’t hooked up to ANYTHING. Sure, I had a BIPAP breathing machine on but it just sucked and blew air, it didn’t monitor anything. What if I stopped breathing? I was in a big corner room at the back of the ward, behind a heavy closed door and big brother wasn’t monitoring ANYTHING in my body! Not my heart, my lungs, my pulse ox… NOTHING! If anything happened… NO ONE WOULD KNOW!!! I felt the panic growing and by midnight I finally beeped the nurse. When he came I asked if he would please check on me at 3am to make sure I was okay (I knew my respiratory nurse was returning at 6am so I split the difference) He promised he would… and he did, at 3am sharp. How do I know? Because I was still awake and full of anxiety. Later I realized that initial panicky night was my first experience with PTSD from this ordeal and, unfortunately, it would not be my last. But alas, that is for another blog post.

Wednesday morning dawned and it had been over two weeks since my initial fever started back in Gettysburg, PA. The nurses said that I had to be able to walk down the hallway unassisted, without oxygen, and keep my pulse ox above 90 before they would discharge me. This actually turned out to be no small task. I had never understood why, after a long illness or surgery, someone would have to go to rehab to learn how to walk again. I always said to myself, “Learn to walk again? What, did they forget?” But now I get it. It’s not that they forgot how to walk; it’s just that their muscles are so atrophied from not walking that their legs have no muscle memory of it, or – in my case — no strength. And being oxygen-deprived and full of lactic acid for so long didn’t help. Walking just the five feet from the bed to the bathroom those first few days took all my strength. Each lift of my leg to go forward felt like I was uprooting a tree and all it’s roots with every step. My whole body felt like lead. But I finally got to take a shower! And so what that there was a slight buckle in the shower floor that caused the water to flood into my hospital room and who cares that it took me several hours to recover my strength after taking it, that shower was probably the best gosh-darned shower I’ve ever had.

Wednesday lunchtime came and I was pretty excited – and not just because they were serving cheesecake – but that it was official: I was being discharged!!! I had passed my walking/pulse ox test TWICE, and I was getting outta there! Yes, I had to give up celebrating the 4th of July in Boston with my friend Dana, but I would go home for a few months to recover and plan to get back out on the road come September. We packed up my stuff for the last time, Brenda very happy to be soon returning home to her hubby and cats, and I was looking forward to getting some serious canine therapy with my beloved dog Toby. As Bren and I sat there waiting for the orderly and my final wheelchair ride, I began to get a feel for the enormity of how close I had come to never leaving the hospital at all, at least not alive. Right then I declared in my heart that I was going to text/email/call every single person I loved, tell them how much they have meant to me, and never stop telling them for as long as I had breath.

But not until I’d finished that one last piece of cheesecake.

SPOILER ALERT: As I publish this I have just flown back to New Jersey to reunite with my MINI Cooper and to pick up on my road trip where I left off. Many have wanted to know how this near-death experience has changed me and my outlook on life. My answer? I am quite changed. So, in the coming post, I promise to try my best to share where I am in that journey. Until then… I gotta wash up the MINI and get back on the road! My first stop? The Critical Care Unit at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, NJ – there are some heroes there I wanna be sure to thank.