By: Merdeka Pravda

An hour after the ICU doctor saw me, my mind started to clear. Slowly. My husband was called in. I wouldn’t be able to fully describe the look on his face. There was relief. There was gratefulness. There was marvel. There was happiness. There was love. I saw it, and at that moment, I knew things were going to be ok.

I fell asleep again shortly and I was woken up, a few hours later by many voices. Three department heads and medical students surrounded my bed. The doctor was explaining something and he was saying a lot of medical terms that were just to big for my still-blurry brain. The students were dismissed and the big honchos were talking to me. I don’t remember much of what was talked about. I knew they were saying I was a very unique case which merited a special ‘class’ for the interns. Then they told me I was to be monitored for a few more hours and then I was to go into surgery. Unknown to me, I had a bad infection on my thigh. Two, to be exact. On the surface, it appeared like an irritated pimple. But underneath, the infection has dug a crater on my flesh. That was were the septicemia was coming from. My blood sugar was so high that my immune system was not working anymore. My body couldn’t react as it should to an infection.

The surgery will carve out the infection. Their dilemna were two things: 1. the infection, having dug a crater, they would need a skin graft to cover it up 2. will I heal, knowing as my diabetes is full blown and not yet controlled at this point.

They were worried about putting me under general anesthesia.

Nevertheless, the surgery went through. I guess they felt it was even more risky not to go through with it. I was in recovery for hours. A nurse checked on me to make sure that feeling was coming back to my feet, first, then, my legs. Then she asked me to bend my legs. Not long after I was transfered to my private room.

I was asleep again for a long time.

When I woke up, I was BLIND.

Not the kind of blind where all you see is black. My kind of blindness was more like there is a permanent cloud on the surface of my eyes. The kind you think you can ‘blink’ away, but can’t. Everything was either shadows or shapes. For the first time since I woke up from the coma, I felt scared. Then my whole body was in pain. Literally every muscle, every bone, even.

The rest of my stay saw me as getting better and I couldn’t wait to get home. I missed my daughter. I missed my home. I felt I was so ungrounded, like I was floating. I needed to come home to find the ground again.

Meanwhile, rumor was circulating that I had died. Some people called the hospital and of course, the hospital wouldn’t just give out information. My tv network decided to put the rumor to rest. So they called me and put me, live on- the- air. Shortly after the broadcast, my husband read to me the running text messages at the bottom of the tv screen. I couldn’t believe how many well wishers I had. And the messages, made me cry. That was one wonderful gift. That day was my birthday. July 26th, I turned 31.

Another gift I got, were my discharge papers. I was being sent home.

Right before I was wheeled out of my room, the nurses produced a cupcake with a single candle. Together with my endocrinologist, Dra. Edith Dalisay, they came into my room, singing happy birthday. Dra, Dalisay, told me, I was one year old, NOT thirty one. She said this was my second life. I was born again.

I got sent home with an insulin pen, a lancet pen and glucose meter, lots of reading materials, which my husband would have to read to me since I am blind, and lots of medications (i took a total of 32 pills in a day at one time).

I was so eager to come home because I missed my daughter so much. She was only six years old.

She was sleeping on the couch when I stepped through the door. She woke up.

Stared at me-expressionless.

My own child didn’t recognize me.

Continued on Part 3

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reynz is one Uragon and a Filipino-American, has many years of public accounting & auditing, broadcast investments, housing tax credits and equity investments as his background. Based in the US, he maintains his personal and humor blog at reyna elena dot com. A graduate of Aquinas U, he went to GWU and Temple U in the United States.