To be discharged directly from the ICU is an unusual occurrence. For a week, I had been in too good a condition to be there, but with no beds available on the leukemia floor, there I stayed, waiting. My blood counts gradually rose. The available bed count did not. Without reason for remaining in the ICU, and no bed, it was time for me to go home. I was released from my unwieldy tether of tubes and wires, free to walk as far as I pleased in any direction, free to rediscover the world outside the hospital.
Through the window of the taxi, everything was strangely new to me. The vast expanse of snow-covered trees and benches in Central Park contrasted so greatly with the crowded landscape of IV poles and stretchers to which I had become accustomed. I saw fashionable coats and boots in place of hospital gowns and non-slip socks, heard car horns and chatting couples rather than the beeps of medical devices and the subdued discussions of doctors.
It seemed at first that the hospital had become my home and my home had become a foreign place. Upon revisiting the hospital two days later for a follow-up appointment, I found that it wasn't just the outside world that had changed. The hospital with which I had become acquainted was seen from a wheelchair, stretcher, or hunched over the handle of an IV pole. Time and distances seemed unbearably long. Elevators crawled, and hallways were endless.
But on this visit, I walked upright, wearing outdoor clothes and shoes. The elevator was just a short distance from the building entrance, the ride up to the fourth floor was brief. Along the way, I saw the tops of people's heads rather than undersides of chins. I was no longer an inhabitant of this place, but a visitor passing through. There were other former in-patients seated in the clinic lobby whom I recognized from the leukemia floor on which I had stayed. They had also exchanged their hospital gowns for winter coats and scarves, wholly indistinguishable as cancer patients, and would soon leave the building to blend in with the rest of the people walking the streets outside.
It is rarely evident on the surface all that a person has gone through in life. The scars on my body have all become hidden from view beneath layers of winter clothes. I have lived a healthy life, experienced the deterioration and weakness that old age brings, been near death. Now, I feel reborn, gaining strength, relearning how to walk, to eat, to be independent. The newness of the world around me is a great thing. I have been given a second life, a second chance to readily absorb my surroundings, to learn new things, only I can still recall all I have learned from my previous life. I am grateful for this, for it has given me both a new understanding of people, as well as a renewed sense of purpose, an urge to use all that I have been given to give back to the world.
Tomorrow, I will return to the hospital for a bone marrow biopsy and CT scan, the results of which will determine whether a bone marrow transplant is possible. No matter the outcome, I am glad to be feeling well at the moment, and immeasurably thankful for being given the strength and support to endure a journey more arduous than I could have imagined.
