It was many years ago in another March, and I had just
arrived in my second hospital. It was supposed to be
mainly for rehab, but I was so weak and suffered so
from a weak short term memory that I still had no idea
when or if I would ever get to go back home.
One day, in early March my day nurse helped me get up
to practice getting into my new wheel chair, and she
asked me what I saw out the window. It was windy and
cold looking, and the trees were bare so I said that
it looked like March. "It was March!" my nurse told me, and
I suppose it was a good sign.
Later I was better at my wheel chair and I was told to
report to the administrator's office one day to fill out some papers, and I remember guiding my chair there to see
her and her assistant and then returning to my room
when it was over.
Then I was told that I was going home the next week, and
you would think that I would be ecstatic, but I was
worried that I was not ready and would not be able to last long there.
I may have looked half dead, but very slowly I was becoming
stronger and more alive than dead. What is it like to
be close to death? For me it was not being in terrible pain, but it was like hearing the angels sing for sure, and knowing that there was more out there than most perfectly healthy people could imagine.
So wife drove me home, one day, and it was like I remembered and it was so good to see our daughters again
and also our two loyal dogs.
A very few weeks later wife drove me back to that same hospital and I got to talk to my former hospital doctor and he was kind. I was then walking thanks to my cane. And while walking in the halls someone came up and hugged me and it was my former day nurse, and I guess she wanted to
congratulate me on continuing to recover. Neither doctor
or nurse had ever seen me walk before.
Then a few weeks later at another medical building I
got a cat-scan and saw my neurosurgeon. I had to walk
a short ways without my cane for him, and then I got permission from him to go after getting my driver's license back. That required many weeks, but I got it in time.
It was the last time I ever had an opportunity to see
a neurosurgeon, and my regular MD had to do.
Better to leave well enough alone! Hope that all of you
here have or will do better than I have.