Brave Enough To Be Bliss

me, and I was doing things like digging through the air and when asked, I would tell her I was trying to find business cards in my purse. Sometimes I would realize I was doing things with my hands in the air and sort of knew it wasn’t right, but those moments of being aware were infrequent. My sister told me at one point I asked her if her neck hurt because she was rubbing it. She said she was already freaked out by my behavior, but that was really disturbing because there was absolutely no way I could have seen her rubbing her neck since I was turned in the opposite direction. So clearly, something was seriously strange about how my mind was functioning. I told her at one point I needed to go to the bathroom, so she helped me in there and while I was sitting on the toilet not urinating, I cried out in excruciating pain which I had only done that one other time in high school. She was scared and I think at that point I was probably scared too. My husband called the surgeon’s office and had the surgeon paged on the weekend because I was continuing to get worse. She said the test didn’t show any infection but if he wanted to take me to the office, she’d have another test run and give me supplies so I could get some relief through self-catheterization. By Sunday, a nurse friend of mine contacted my husband because apparently, I had sent her a text, but it was just gibberish, so she knew something was seriously wrong. She told my husband if I had a UTI, it might be painful to urinate, but I should still be able to and by this time I still hadn’t and could barely get any of my loosest, stretchy pants to go over my distended belly. She said to contact my primary care physician. Because I worked with the physicians so closely, I had her cell phone number, and she said to come to the office first thing in the morning. My husband took me there and we were taken into an exam room. My doctor literally opened the exam room door, quickly looked at me and told my husband to go get the car and she would call the emergency department and tell them I was on the way there. To make this long story shorter, I was in acute renal failure, meaning my kidneys weren’t functioning well enough to remove waste products from my blood. My husband asked in the emergency department if it could be a complication from the surgery and was told no. I was admitted to the hospital and at 2 a.m. called my nurse friend because I had “seen” on television there was a press conference, and our CEO was being interviewed. I wanted to know what was going on because that’s something I would have been res ponsible for with my job. I was still not well because of course none of that was actually happening. It still seems so odd because that situation seemed so real to me and is one thing I can actually remember seeing even today, even if it had only been in my mind. In other words, I wasn’t aware of and don’t recall what was really happening, but I was aware of and can remember what wasn’t really happening but seemed so very real to me. The nephrologist came by early the next morning and said if my creatinine level didn’t start going down, I would have to have dialysis within a couple hours. A normal range for adult women is 0.59-1.04 mg/dL; mine was at least 6.8 mg/dL. Fortunately, it did start coming down a little bit, so I was able to avoid dialysis. I believe a catheter had been placed when I came into the hospital, but it was removed within a day or two and I could get up to use the bathroom. I noticed that the bed was wet, though, when I got up. This was confusing, so I mentioned it to the nurse. She said sometimes that happens and it should resolve quickly, and they just put a pad on the bed. Even though I didn’t feel up to it, I forced myself to start walking several times a day so I would be able to complete a few laps around the floor and prove I was ready to go home. I had to beg and plead before the doctor would agree to discharge me so I could be home on Christmas Eve . I just didn’t want Kylee’s Christmas to be ruined. As it turned out, I could barely keep my eyes open that evening sitting on the couch, but at least I was home with her. Once I got home the urine leakage started getting worse and my husband had to go buy incontinence underwear. As I started feeling better, of course, the incontinence became more and more worrisome. I had been preparing for an important strategy meeting wit h the health system’s board of directors, so it was a busy and stressful time at work. I still wasn’t feeling well, but I went back to work after the new year’s holiday wearing my incontinence underwear. Generally, I was in meetings from 7 or 8 a.m. to at least 5 p.m. with very few breaks, so there were times I didn’t realize how much leakage there had been. But sometimes when I stood up, I would feel a gush and even had a wet spot on my office chair a time or two. It was humiliating to be wearing “diapers” and worry about leaving spots on chairs if too much urine came out at once. The good news

53