I was trying to remember and write every detail of how it all happened and then it occurred to me, does it matter how it happened? Doesn’t the only thing that really matter is the fact that it did happen. Truth be told, it is too painful to relive all the events that culminated in what happened on October 7th and whereas I might be able to distance myself enough from it that I can write it all down as poignantly as I experienced it. For now, it is only important to remember that it wasn’t all a dream, that it did happen. The bare facts of the story are:
I went to the beach all set to drown myself. I overdozed on 4 strips of Panadol to keep me from being afraid of the water. It was a very hot day and when a few hours later the medicine started kicking in I collapsed on the stile. In my semi-consciousness I sensed fishermen gathering around me and was afraid of getting raped. I had wanted to die painlessly and being raped was nowhere in that muted seemingly accidental death I had imagined. At that point I called my sister.
I did not want to desecrate my parents’ house with something so ugly, which is why I wasn’t at home od-ing in the first place. I asked her to take me to the hospital. She did, knowing all the while, without my telling her what had happened.
I went into the ER and had an NG tube inserted in my nose which pumped charcoal into my stomach for the next 4-6 hours. I can’t remember how many times I threw up in the SICU.
I have very little recollection of the next 48 hours except little flashes: IVs being inserted into my arms and blood being drawn every so often; periods of unconsciousness interrupted by shortness of breath – I was later told that I was consistently slipping into a state of apnea, that I was doing about one and half minute of no oxygen to the brain where at 3 minutes of no oxygen, you become vegetable; the woman next to me being resuscitated and my complete oblivion to it; the antidote burning my arm as it coursed through my veins, I still have streaks on my arm plotting its journey from the IV up my arm.
My liver was badly damaged. I was close enough to dying that my sister and brother flew in from the US.
4 days in the SICU, and 2 days in the ward. Then I was home. Back to the same house I had left the Sunday before, never to return to again. I am alive. I have walked to very edge of life and back. I don’t know how I feel about it.
