Were the stars aligned differently... was there a shadow cast upon the moon?
Or was it the coming of my own sense and internal impending doom?
Looking back...what really happened on the evening of June 8, 2006?
I remembered my daughters were all with me... couddled, cozy and content.
Although my breathing had become increasingly labored, I maintained minimal fear...
For I had confidently learned to control my asthma for nearly 43 years... without any fear!
But this evening, something was different, something went wrong... I was drowning in an airless world and needed help!
I used inhaler after inhaler... in home breathing treatment after treatment... I even rushed outside for air and resorted to loosening my belt.
I urgently called upon my brother for my own family insurance and then went to the hospital where I received immediate and critical care.
However, the longer I remained there... the more questions were posed... the more fears arose... as I became acutely aware.
Once at the hospital, everyone appeared hurried... they all rushed around me... seemingly distracted and non committal.
I felt that I was the only one who knew that I was indeed deathly ill!
As time elapsed and things went from bad to worse and from worse to even worser... "As critical as critical can get" said one doctor - My life became uncertain as to "will I live or will I die"?
For me... time had evolved into slow motion and my world became out of control as I kept asking "Why me...why me...oh, why"?
Everything seemed to spiral downward and I distinctly remember hearing voices, fear, panic and someone saying, "This is not good... he's not responding"!
Again, I thought to myself inside, "How could this be, I had just spent the past week golfing"!
However, for 18 days... me eyes remained closed!
I was medically sedated... my body did not twitch, move nor flex while positioned in a frightening and deathly pose.
Family, friends and loved ones all came to my bedside.
A constant and gentle aroma of love drifted in and out of my room and whispers, prayers, and pleas for me not to die!
Although hard to believe... somewhere... somehow... I heard them all and felt every tug, hug and kiss!
As I silently cried deeper than deep inside... and wished and wished and wished!
On June 26, I briefly awoke... my eyes opened and my nightmare turned confusingly real?
Again, I felt death from my head to my toes... I could not move, speak or feel.
Was I alive... had I been in an accident...was I paralyzed... never to move again...never to hug my children...where was my faith?
What happened to me on June 8?
Each night... empty and alone... I saw myselfs reflection in the lights and mirror's from above as I lay strapped, connected, and harnessed between life saving tubes, fluids and machines.
All the while, with my cognitive thoughts and memory intact... I laid there thinking, this is not right, "I'm a Green"!
All the machines, medications, and I. V's... a bi-pap, an air bag, a respirator, a ventilator, a tracheotomy... the constant and painful suctioning sounds over and over... the myriad of nurses, therapists, doctors, nutritionists all striving to keep me alive!
Despite the mental, emotional, and physical consequences and questions or treatment should I survive?
Then it started... the uncontrollable body movements...earthquakes in my legs!
Indescribable, violent, uncontrollable, gut wrenching shakes, jerks, tremors and sweat that increased throughout my body each and every day.
Doctors scratched their heads and then they were gone, only to be replaced by someone new. They confusingly rotated weekly to address and treat my ever increasing needs.
In every case... with every new doctor... I received the same puzzled, socially and culturally inept medical looks, comments, and excessive patronizing leads.
They implied the answers to my condition laid within their medical degrees and books. They initially said my symptoms were due to the aftermath of the "assault to my body"... and then they said it may be the lasting side effects of the paralytics which seemed to create the ever so lasting and uncontrollable pain.
All I knew was that my mind, body and spirit were completely and utterly drained!
Each day I was engulfed in the clenches of despair... the grief that surrounded me... and my own internal fear.
I was beyond the point of heart ache... past my emotional and physical breaking point... even my eyes could no longer shed a tear.
My body was exhausted... I was spent and thought there was nothing left... I was ready to give up... I was ready to die... I wanted to die!
But I knew that I could not stop fighting for "life" hearing my children's loving poems and letters read to me and then seeing their tear soaked bright and innocent eyes.
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