On my 4th anniversary of not dying…. this is what I learned.
Remember Cinco de Mayo in 2020? You might remember it because you weren’t able to go out for margaritas or you had to celebrate in your living room.
I remember it because I almost died that day.
My little family had gotten and recovered from COVID, in the very beginning of the pandemic. Back when it was scary to get it because people were dying in large quantities around me (we lived in Manhattan). I lost a couple of neighbors, family, friends lost family members, and we didn’t know who was next.
I had seemingly had COVID in March (I was really sick) and I recovered. I would go for long walks every day after work to try to get my lungs back to their previous capacity. But on May 5, 2020 something was different. I was working from home, seeing my clients virtually. I noticed that day that I was super short of breath. My walk from the bedroom to the kitchen felt like I ran a marathon and I found myself breathless when simply talking to my clients. It felt different, but trying not to be alarmed, I just figured my lungs were still recovering.
At the end of the day I would walk about a mile to walk my family member back from work. I began the walk and walked halfway up the hill and had to stop because I was struggling to breathe. Somehow I made it to my family member and we walked home together. He kept saying, “Something isn’t right. You have not been like this before.” He had just lost his brother to COVID, so I thought he was just being cautious. We went home and I took my pulse because my heart felt like it was racing. It was 157 and it wasn’t going down. He suggested I go to the hospital but I really didn’t want to go. I had just recovered from COVID and I didn’t want to go back into the over-capacity hospitals around me to get it again. So I decided to book a call with a virtual service of the hospital to triage people before they went to the ER. I got a really sweet doctor who was actually an opthomologist (they were super short on help in those days!) he had me do a series of exercises and tell him what my pulse was. He noted that it was staying up and not going down, even after several minutes of rest. He said I needed to go into the ER because something was wrong. I started crying. Most people who went to the hospital those days didn’t come back out or came out in a body bag. I was scared. Finally, after a lot of convincing, I told the doctor I would go to the hospital. I won’t ever forget what he said, “Ok Drew, I have called the hospital, they are expecting you, please don’t wait too long to go.” I got into a taxi and went down to the hospital, I picked the best one in the city. I got dropped off at the wrong spot by the taxi and had to walk, I continued to struggle to breathe. When I got in the ER staff saw me struggling. They asked if I had to walk far to get there. I said I had just walked from the corner. They looked at me and looked at the triage person and said, “get her in and evaluate her quickly.” They were trying not to worry me but I knew they were worried.
It wasn’t the hospital situation I envisioned. It was empty and quiet. It’s the best hospital experience I’ve ever had except that I was alone and I was scared. After a lot of tests a resident came back to talk to me. She said, “Thank goodness you came in because you would have died if you didn’t.” She proceeded to tell me that my lungs were so full of clots that they were practically fully clogging the artery. They said I was having a pulmonary embolism and they needed to put me on anti-thrombotics immediately. They said I would be ok now that I was in the hospital. I spent an overnight in the hospital and I was still testing positive for COVID a month and a half after I thought I had fully recovered! When I got discharged, I was wheeled out to the lobby and there was a whole choir singing “Lean on Me.” I realized that there weren’t a lot of people leaving that hospital alive these days. Gulp. Another reminder that I was lucky to be able to leave.
I went home and it was hard. I wasn’t able to do anything. I was weak and short of breath. I was on blood thinners now and couldn’t use knives. My friends sent me prepared meals and called me on the phone. I was exhausted and super emotional. I kept thinking back to the resident telling me I would have dropped dead at home if I hadn’t have gone in right away. My kids, who I had told that their uncle died because “his lungs stopped working” were looking at me worried that now it seemed my lungs weren’t working either.
Unless you have been in a life or death situation, it’s hard to describe what that feels like. I had been in that situation once before when I almost drowned in the ocean in Mexico, but this was different. I could avoid the ocean but I can’t avoid my body. In a way, I felt like my body failed me. I went between being thankful to be alive and coping with the fact that I should have/would have been dead had I waited even a little bit longer to go to the emergency room. I had a former coworker who had dropped dead in his house because of COVID, so I knew it was a possibility. It just had never been a possibility to me. Now it was, which I feel like was what made me so emotional.
So, at my 4 year anniversary of not dropping dead, I’ve learned the following:
The real friends that you have will come in and help when you need them. I had friends who kept me company virtually in the hospital, friends who kept checking on me, friends who delivered me groceries, sent things for my kids to do, and had prepared meals delivered.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is difficult. I have been working with traumatized people my entire career, some who have PTSD. I have so much more appreciation how real it is. Even just recounting my near-death experience raises my heart rate. I saw myself in the faces of people in the documentary ‘The First Wave.” I understood their tears, I rejoiced in their return home and cried along with the families who didn’t have their loved one return home.
Put yourself first. In the lead up to me having to go to the hospital, my body was really struggling and trying to tell me to rest. I felt the pressure from my kids’ teachers to get work done. I avoided my own need for rest and recovery to make sure they got done what they needed to. Guess what? I’m not doing that again. Nothing in terms of work that they had to do would have replaced their mom. The teacher can wait.
Not everyone is going to be happy with what you decide to do for yourself, do it anyway. When this all happened, I had been seeing 27 clients a week, what I needed to in order to make a decent living taking health insurance. The Pulmonary Embolism made me rethink how I was working. I went off of health insurance so that I could see half the amount of people for the same amount of money. Some clients were mad at me. People said I was going to be ‘inaccesible’ to people who really needed the help. How ‘inaccessible’ would I be if I was dead? Not only to clients but my family too, who I wanted to spend many more years with. I found that the clients that weren’t really invested in the work dropped off and those that made therapy a priority stayed. I enjoyed my work more and was a better therapist because I was taking care of myself AND my clients.
Take care of yourself. The PE made me slow down, I had to say no to things, I couldn’t do as much. I tried to put together my kids new beds a couple of months after and it was too much. You have to ease into things. You can’t rush your recovery.
I know it’s a cliche BUT life is too short. It’s true. You never know when your last day is. So enjoy your life. Want to live on the beach? Do it. Want to change your outlook? Do it. Whatever you want to do, do it. Luckily I’ve done most of the things I wanted to do in my life except raise my kids to be adults, so I have no regrets.
