I’ve always hated hospitals. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone is particularly fond of them as a general rule, but my hatred runs deep. After all, they were basically my home away from home for the first eighteen years of my existence. I always hated how white they are. They give off such a feeling of sterility…cold and harsh. Now I know, being a hospital and all, being sterile in the literal sense of the word is pretty important. But honestly, why do they have to be so white? Harsh tiles and walls, sheets and machines, all the way from floor to ceiling…white. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation, like the ability to see unsavory and…unsterile stains easily, but still, would a splash of pale blue on the walls hurt anyone? Yeesh.
I was held down by a team of doctors and nurses for the first time at the age of four years old. I was freshly diagnosed with a practically unheard of autoimmune disease (this was twenty eight years ago, autoimmune diseases weren’t as widely recognized or trendy as they are today), and they were giving me my first treatment. Well, they were attempting to give me my first treatment. An IV full of laboratory produced white blood cells, modern science at its absolute most fascinating. They asked my mother to help hold me down as well, to attempt to comfort (or distract) me as they held my wriggling, fear filled body down to stick a needle into my weak and struggling veins. I vividly remember the pain in her eyes, her desperation for us to be anywhere but there in that moment. I know plenty of mothers these days who would look at this situation and call it abuse, trauma inducing torture on a scared child. However, it was either that, or me dying…so ultimately, I feel she made the right call. My mother had what a lot of people don’t have: the strength to do whatever was necessary, to make the hard, impossible choices that were necessary to save my life. Was the experience traumatizing? Of course it was. For both of us. But I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this right now had it not happened. Play pretend all you want, there is no reasoning with a sick, fevered four year old that hasn’t yet developed the brain capacity to understand that level of logic.
That was far from the last time that experience had to happen. I got IVs full of white blood cells once a month, every month, from age four to age eighteen, aside from a short stint where a doctor decided to try to take me off the treatment, which almost ended in my death. I basically sat on death’s doorstep my entire childhood. Doctors had no issue informing my mother that they didn’t see me living to see twenty one…while little me was sitting in the room. So naturally, I was convinced I’d have a short life. It’s probably one of the reasons for my impulsive, grab life by the balls attitude. I was always convinced I was here for a good time, not a long time, so every moment of life needed to be lived. Yet I spent so many of those moments in hospital beds. Once a month, every month, for eight hours each time. That is one thousand, three hundred and forty four hours undergoing IV treatment, for those keeping track. And that was just my regularly scheduled tune ups, it doesn’t take into account the several times there had to be mid-month intervention or intravenous antibiotics added to the mix.
I was always sick anyway, regardless of the treatment. I wasn’t dead though, and that was why those treatments kept happening. My health was always so fragile, and the rest of the world treated me as a fragile creature because of it, which I hated. I was homeschooled by the state to help avoid germ exposure. I was kept out of sports because of the risk of damage to my port catheter, a nifty little device you normally see in cancer patients for chemotherapy treatments, but that I got to carry in my chest from eight years old until age nineteen, when I was finally free of it. Ironically, I felt naked without it. After eleven years of having something, it becomes a part of you. I’ll never forget running my fingers over my chest where it once lived but was no longer. It was the strangest of double dip feelings, some sort of euphoria mixed with a sense of melancholy. Living the human experience is so wild.
Anyway, as a teenager with fragile health, a limited social circle because of said fragility, and a struggle with morbid obesity due to, one, a completely screwed metabolism from years of medications, and two, hardly any physical activity whatsoever thanks to the doctor prescribed plan that basically said, “keep her inside and don’t let her move”...I was pretty fucking miserable. It was one night around one in the morning that I saw an infomercial for Hip Hop Abs DVDs that I got the wild idea that maybe there was something in this endless sea of uncontrollable variables that I could, in fact, control. I begged my mom to order those DVDs, and without hesitation, she dropped the hundred dollars to get them. I had to wait a whole two weeks for them to show up (no Amazon yet), but my life was forever changed by those “silly” dance DVDs.
I struggled relentlessly at first, out of shape and out of breath. I’d end every workout laying on the floor wondering how I was ever going to get any better. But slowly, I did. And along with losing some weight and gaining a hair’s worth of confidence, I gained a tremendous interest in nutrition and health. I wanted to find any and all controllable variables that might help my situation, so I did. I’ve studied all things health, nutrition, and wellness for sixteen years, and it all started as a way to try to control what I could and better my health.
Doctors have no idea why my body started functioning properly on it’s own. They said I must have grown out of my disease, but I always knew it was my drastic shift in lifestyle that did it. It was a lifestyle that got me relentlessly mocked and judged, and still does (one of the reasons I haven’t stayed true to this incredibly important core value) but back then it didn’t matter, because I knew it saved my life.
I was free of my port catheter and I was finally free of hospitals. No more cold, white tiles. No more IV poles. No more beeping. No more of that smell. You know the one. Every hospital in the country has it. I was free. And I did that myself. But I still hated hospitals.
Flash forward to 2015, and I found myself back in those white sheets. Back in that cold, white room. I was bleeding, and dripping. I was shaking. I’d been raped, and I’d been convinced to go to the hospital. I refused a rape test. I was scared, I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was overwhelmed by all of the beeping. All of the white. All of that smell. They told me, in addition to the “physical trauma” I had endured, I’d also suffered an early onset miscarriage. I blame him to this day. Say what you want, but being violently thrown around, held down, and assaulted within an inch of my life had to have played a part here. I was numb. I couldn’t think. My face was throbbing where the bruises were forming. The one on my hip shaped like a hand grip was stinging, too. But all I could think was just how much I needed to get out of that cold, fluorescent room. I really hated hospitals.
It’s later in 2015 now, and I’m back in those white walls. I’d been numbed by that experience, and I no longer wanted to be alive. My mother, who angrily proclaimed that, “we had spent my entire life fighting to keep me alive, and I wasn’t about to be selfish enough to end it now,” sat next to me in the waiting room. They took me to a different floor, the one for the mentally unstable, such as myself. You guys, the walls were light blue. Not white. From a psychology standpoint, colors like light blue are known to be calming, which would explain why this particular wing would opt for that color. But wouldn’t it make sense for the entire hospital to attempt to be comforting? What do I know? Anyway, they took my belt and my shoe laces. They took my phone, but let me keep my Dungeon Master’s Guidebook. They took my jewelry. Anything that could be assessed as a potential weapon, gone. After hours of waiting, they finally talked to me and decided I was fine and just needed some sleep. They were wrong, but at least I didn’t have to stay there. The walls may have been blue, but that smell was still ever present. I was on twenty four hour watch at home for a while, and I found a therapist. I really hated hospitals.
Another time jump, it’s 2021. Another miscarriage. I couldn’t honestly tell you if this one was better or worse, if such terms can even be used in these types of situations. On the one hand, I wasn’t assaulted. In fact, this baby was conceived out of love and the desire to have a baby made from two people that kind of thought they may as well do life together. So, it was better in the sense that there was no violence, and no bruises. But on the other hand, the loss hit so much harder. I had to go in for a D&C, but these were COVID times, so I wasn’t allowed to have anyone with me. My husband dropped me off and I walked in alone. All the way across the country, in a completely different state…same white walls. Same smell. I laid in those white sheets, numb to what I was experiencing. They struggled to get my IV in, a tribute to my younger years. When I awoke from the procedure, I was covered in holes and bruises. Thirty eight, to be precise. All over my hands, my arms, my legs, and my feet. Apparently drawing blood was a real struggle. I looked like a pin cushion. I went home, and felt a similar sense of emptiness. One that slightly resembled the feeling of losing my port catheter, aside from the joyous part. But one that directly emulated the one from the night of my sexual assault. Empty, stripped of identity, stripped of life force…just void. That emptiness still lives there, but is suppressed by the need to get up and feed growing twin tweenagers and make sure the dishes are done. I really hated hospitals.
Here we are in 2023, and I’ve spent more time in those white sheets inside those white walls on top of those white tiles, enveloped by that God forsaken smell, than I have in the last twelve years. Having COVID, followed by COVID pneumonia, and leading to Long COVID lung, has been a wild ride. Months of Urgent Care and emergency rooms. Inhalers and steroids. White walls, white lights, white floors. Today was no different. A day surrounded by the white, and the smell. An oxygen mask, to save my life once again. A steroid shot. More drugs. More inhalers. I hate hospitals, but I’m grateful for them.
There are days that I wonder if maybe I’m not meant to be alive, but then I remember that the Universe doesn’t care enough to plot someone’s death in such a personal manner. What I can tell you is this: The story I just told above, a brief little glimpse into my life, is the reason why having a woman who barely knows me question my “resilience” is beyond insulting. It is enraging. My life has been built on the very essence of being kicked down, realizing I can’t stay there, and standing back up. I don’t tolerate self pity well, for I have built strength from staring down the barrel of a seemingly unconquerable situation and finding my way through it. How? By seeking the controllable factors, and acting on them. Growth, healing, change, success…none of these things come from a pity party for one. They come from realizing that, to a certain extent, you decide what you’re going to do with your life. Life comes for everyone. If the Universe is out to get you, I assure you it is no more than it is out to get everyone else. We all have problems, and we all have uncontrollable factors. But there is always something that is in your control to change. What will you do with it?
Resilience is forged, not given. It isn’t something you can learn in a training or from a powerpoint presentation. It’s something that is gained from being kicked all the way down three hundred times but making sure that you stand back up before number three hundred and one. Resilience comes from walking into the fire and rising from the ashes, stronger and more prepared for the next time. Because there won’t ever be a time that life stops coming for you…until you’re dead. Make sure you’re strong enough to go down with a fight.
I’m down again. The workout routine I cultivated and several aspects of my life have to change or be put on hold for a while. But there are still things I can control, and I will. And I promise you, I will stand back up, and I will be stronger than ever.
The last piece of wisdom I can leave you with is this: make sure to surround yourself with people who love you while you’re down, support you in your efforts to stand back up, and celebrate every bit of your success. Find the people who will come get you and drive 100 mph down route 66 at midnight with the top down on your Mustang, listening to A Day To Remember and screaming at the top of their lungs - thus embodying the feeling of freedom you are experiencing for the first time in your life, being disease and port catheter free. Find the people that will jump into the cold Pacific ocean with you, not knowing that they saved your life by doing so. Resilience doesn’t mean walking alone…it just means you have to keep walking.
-Dominique
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