Isolation

Coma and ICU experience

Isolation
I lay there alone. My only company the endless buzzing, beeping and hum of the machines used to keep me alive. I have no voice. Doctors come in, prod, touch my body with gloved fingers, squint at the machines behind their blue masks, close the glass wall separating me from the outside world. They consult, gesture and move on. I watch them and don’t even care that they are talking about me and my health and how they are going to keep me existing. I am a science experiment, blue ribbon at the science fair is keeping me alive. It’s all an experiment.
I can not talk. The tube inserted in my trachea, the chest tube, the ventilator breathing for me keep me from communicating. My arms can not move. IV’s, central and arterial lines are like a straight jacket binding me to this world. Nurses come in, their pitying eyes looking over me. Do they know I’m awake? Do they know I’m still here? Do they even know who I am? I have no voice.
I drift from this world to behind the curtain of anesthesia, pain killers and coma. Sometimes I am wheeled to an operating room, briefly aware that there are countless voices and people there to observe and participate in my procedure. When I awake I wonder how many days or weeks it has been. My friends and family come in. I see them in their protective yellow paper robes, their gloves and masks and wonder if they need protection from me or me from them. It doesn’t even matter. I am no longer me. I have no voice. I can not ask any questions or tell anyone of the endless pain or the terror I am experiencing. The nightmares- I’m not sure if they are really nightmares or if it is reality. I watch my daughter running on an endless treadmill. I am unable to reach her. Is this real? I have no one to ask. No one can hear me. I have no voice.
Isolation is not quiet. It is beeping and buzzing and disembodied voices. It is papers rustling, latex gloves snapping, machines whirring. Isolation is the icy cold aloneness when you realize you can see, hear smell and feel what is going on around you and to you but no one else knows if you are there.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

This is hard and tough. Without mentioning my medical problems, I'll just say I've been there. Something pretty close, at least. Such helplessness and despair. Thoughts of "will I make? If I do, will I be able to do things again?" I remember buying coffee filters, seeing that there were 100 of them in the package and asking myself,"Will I get to use them all?"
Your writing is excellent and I hope you live happily, writing away, until the age of 100.

[Young Widow’s Muse]

Thank you so much for this review. Peace and good health to you as well.