The hard bit I've been working on.

Deciding how to handle this is going to be hard. After all, I nearly died. They predicted I would be in a permanent vegetative state if I lived. Kenny cautions me not to be too much of a “downer” and I agree. He points out, “We lived it. Maybe others don’t want to know the details.” And I’m sure he’s right.

But I promised to write about the edges. To remember the parts my mind and my brain long to forget. They are actively working against me, because they WANT me to forget. “Nothing to see here…move on.” So, this one last time, I am going to go back to the dark and scary places, write some of them down, and then do the forgetting. Maybe this part of the blog is just for me, to put what has happened into some kind of perspective. But please read along, anyway.

On Tuesday, October 30, I vaguely remember telling Kenny I was tired and was going to “go read my book” – code at our house for taking a nap. About 1:30, Kenny heard the dogs barking and howling – making noises he’d never heard. He ran in, and found me in a seizure – full on and in Technicolor.

He called an ambulance, but even now won’t tell me much about what happened. They raced me to the hospital, and started the treatment to make the seizures stop.

But they didn’t. I was having status epilepticus seizures – something to be avoided if you can. The mortality rate is something like 20-30%, depending on which scary website you read. Brain damage can start after 5 minutes.

Treatment in Tyler didn’t go well. Poor Kenny and Travis were visited by a priest, which was a lovely gesture from the hospital, but they say seeing the priest coming down the hall for them was enough to make their poor Protestant hearts stop.

The seizures continued, they put me in a coma, and by Thursday gave me two more days and started looking for options. Happily, some of my doctors were affiliated with a specialty hospital in Dallas. It’s the place you go when there’s nowhere else. You have to apply for admission, and I suppose you have to be circling the drain at a sufficient rate to be accepted.

Friday morning they helicoptered me to Dallas, part of my brain still seizing, me still in a coma, Kenny told this was a very rare condition. Somehow this figures. And I’m trying to spare you the details, I really am.

Doctors do not have any clue what will happen as they bring Cynthia to a conscious state. The brain may respond within a few hours, a few days, a few months, or.... and we don't even think about "or".

I see why Kenny is leery about sharing the details of these dark days. I have the advantage of having slept through this madness. He saw it all. He was there, making decisions that would ultimately save my life. He had to consider the possibility that we had run out of miracles.

I think it is harder to be the caregiver than to be the patient, especially in these grim early days. Worse yet is for family when they visit, having to be brave and think of encouraging things to say when it feels like a lie.

The next five days are carefully documented by St. Kenny. The attempts to get me out of the coma without another seizure, rashes, fevers, worries about the ventilator…the notes go on and on.

And it is peculiarly painful to me – mostly because the ones I love had to stand there and watch this drama unfold, not knowing how it would end.

But here are some random thoughts. This period is like the difference between “literature” and other kinds of writing. “Literature” is almost always dark, and there is virtually never a happy ending, at least in traditional terms. As soon as you put a happy ending on an otherwise dark story, it falls out of the literature category.

Propofol – the drug that keeps you in a coma and let Michael Jackson sleep through the night - is one hell of a dangerous drug. I am sorry for him, his doctor is an idiot and should still be in prison. During the long hours of my coma, Kenny calculated that I was getting in 24 hours what he got just to sleep through a night. Without breathing support. No wonder he died.

A specialty hospital is an amazing place, by all reports. Kenny calls the team that worked on me the Navy Seals of medicine. I’m actually sorry I missed it. In fact, some part of me wishes I could see some of what happened. But that’s silly and maybe it’s just as well I can’t.

But what I know is this: I didn’t wake until November 9. Between “reading a book” and opening my eyes, there is this dark emptiness. But just as I was waking up, I thought to myself, “this would be a great time for a Near Death Experience”.

And I swear to you, on everything I hold most dear, this is what happened:

In front of my eyes, as if I were looking at a stage, was a crowd of people. On my left was a group that stretched back as far as I could see…thousands of people who all knew me. At the front were my parents, both sets of grandparents, and a dear aunt and uncle. On my right were three very tall spirits, wearing cowls, very beautiful but with no faces. They let me know they weren’t human and had never been, but they were with me, too. As I watched, the spirits and my family talked about me – not whether or not my soul was in jeopardy, and not even about whether I would die. They were just visiting about me, and letting me know they were there. There are no words for the beauty.

I haven’t shared my experience with just anyone (until now) because it was so vivid and lovely. I haven’t started a quest to see whether NDEs are “real”…or looked for validation about whether or not I saw what I did. I haven’t even had any emotional stirrings one way or the other about it. It was just real, the same way a tree in your garden is real. It made me very happy.