Badly sprained ankle, pain meds, crutches, and bed rest….

The End

My time at the hospital was interesting. They stuck 6 electrodes to my face, 2 behind my ears, 4 in my hair, 2 to my shoulders, and 2 to my legs. They also put tubes in my nose and mouth and two electrode belts around my waist. Then I had to sleep with all of that crap connected to machines. It was not fun at all.

Then, today I had to get up and have other tests done. I gave 4 vials of blood, had an unltra sound, got a shot in the same vein that I gave blood from, and got x-rays. It was a very long day. On the up side, I went on a shopping spree with my mom to make me feel better.

I am exhausted now, so I am actually going to sleep at a reasonable time!

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I am so not going to have a fun night. I will be in the hospital from tonight until tomorrow afternoon. It is going to be so boring! Everything is so white and clean. Hospitals are a universe condensed into white walls, endless tile, waiting rooms, and uniform carpet.

The people living there are aliens in multi-colored smocks, running around speaking only in acronyms, wielding strange machines with blinking lights and foreign whistles. So strange and foreboding they seem, most of us start or end our lives in these places. They can be houses of great joy and love, or they can be places of immense sorrow and despair. As children the majority of us fear this great looming place, as we learn early on it’s a place we go when we hurt. Though as we grow older many of us cling to that association, and avoid this place as much as possible.

Hidden in the cracks of this white fortress of the wounded, is happiness. It may be small and hard to find, but it is there, among the frequent visitors chatting with their attendants. It’s among the grand-children coming to visit with balloons in tow. It’s among the new mothers, shining beautifully at this being they’ve created.

Pain is also here, whether it be the deep emotional pain of the loss of a loved one, or the momentary pain of a needle point piercing the skin. Such sadness can grow here, in the shadows of doubt and the loss of hope, and as humans we always seem to take more notice to the darkness rather than the light. We define our lives with the pain we feel, and since the hospital is so frequently the host of it, we often leave it changed in some way or another.

Sometimes, we may find the sorrow and the ache to be too great. We imagine it might just swallow us up in a dark tidal wave, leading us down to drown in its depths. But what so few of us realize is that the darkness, the pain, the sorrow is not something bad. It is a natural balance of life. Dark and light, sadness and joy. Do not fight the tide as it threatens to swallow you, but embrace it courageously, feel it deep inside you but do not let it overcome you. It may steal from us a small piece of our being, but with that small part we connect with the billions of others that have felt the waves of sorrow and have lived on. For as all things, this too shall pass, and we will look back and appreciate our time in the light more deeply than ever before. Often we find that only when we’re sopping wet and frozen to the bone, we realize that we have taken our happiness, our warmth, for granted.

I take solace in the happiness here in this foreign land, the moments of laughter and light I receive from the wonderful people here. In this micro-universe, they are the ones who remain. They alone stand and bear the sorrow and the happiness, the pain and the healing, and they do all this and more, day in and day out. I will leave this place, and I will be a changed person. Hopefully a better person, and one who appreciates the value of a ray of sunshine.

Do not fear this place. It is a place of great transition, a place of life as well as death, and we should never fear the yin and the yang of the world. One does not exist without the other, and people do not exist without happiness and sorrow, without pain and pleasure, without darkness and light. And when you stand where I stand on the shores of the blue oblivion, remember, light is not far off if you just hold on.

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