Song of Myself

Okay, everyone, I'm back.

Seriously, I'm back. As in me, Piper.

Yes, I am aware that I have written a couple of posts in the past week and, no, I am not having an identity crisis (at least, not yet). That was, in fact, me writing -- but I'm not entirely positive how much of it was me. Meaning, I guess, that up until this weekend I've felt just a little bit out of myself and uncertain. I've been going through the motions, almost entirely focused on just recovering and regaining lost ground. I've been stretching my muscles and flexing my wings a little, uncertain of what would still work and what might be broken. And then I found that when I did start moving, I was still there, and it was still me, and eventually I knew that I would find the right moment to leave the ground again -- but it still took one or two hops before that finally happened.

And then, as of yesterday, I suddenly realized that I am back.

I'm back where I want to be physically, which I guess is kind of a bold statement right now considering that where I truly want to be physically is probably an impossibility with these lungs. But just being able to really move, and to walk, and to do gyrotonics again and feel my body opening back up and allowing itself to relax is, I'm not going to lie, almost like a rebirth. And that, in turn, has brought me back into so much better of a place mentally, so that I have been able to actually feel some emotion about what happened last week, rather than just simply bewilderment. The best part of all of this being that, after feeling some of that stuff (both good and bad, simple and hard), and after talking to some of my friends who have been so kind and supportive and entirely willing to admit that they don't understand but also entirely willing to try, I have actually been able to come to one overall conclusion about the events of last Friday night/Saturday morning:

It was absolutely fine.

Or maybe I should be a little more specific there. What happened last week was a very strange occurrence -- one of those weird things that might be listed on the consent sheet as a possibility, but that never really happens to anyone you actually know. Okay, so it happened. It happened and my team did the best they could to take care of me. It happened and, to be honest, the outcome wasn't even that dramatic, despite how it might have felt in the moment. I came right off the vent. I went home a few hours later. I recovered okay, with a few bumps along the way. And, most importantly, I made it back to myself -- fully and completely -- and I'm not angry, not super frightened, not shaken to the core. I was kind of expecting to be at least one of those things, weirdly, but I'm just not. I am, as ever, waiting for a transplant, grateful for the opportunity, happy with my choice of a center, and maybe just a little bit more bruised for the experience.

But then again, bruises heal. (Trust me, my wrist right now is living proof of the truth of that statement.)

I think we're all familiar with the tired old adage: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm beginning to think that what doesn't kill you, well, doesn't kill you -- and honestly that's enough for me. If there is any great lesson to be learned from this all, maybe it's just that unexpected and even bad things can happen, and when they do, it's not the end of the world. Things will eventually return back to "normal" (even if that normal looks a little different than before) and life will go on.

And eventually, when we're ready, we will all come back to ourselves.