hospital

Yesterday, I took a loved one to the hospital. Everything is fine all around, but it was an experience.

I have been diagnosed with medical PTSD, and I have a difficult time going to the hospital campus where I was diagnosed. 

But my family needed me, so I pushed it down, and we went. 

I went to park the car and met them inside, and then was told which room they were in, and my heart dropped.

This is a big hospital, like I think the biggest in the region (I don't even know what a region consists of, but it's big) and the room my person was in, is the same exact room where I was diagnosed with a stroke, undiagnosed with a stroke, and then given a lumbar puncture. I vomited my guts out in that room after my spinal tap. My doctor came in and told me that I was likely developing a disease I had never heard of before, and I thought I was going to die. All in that room. I arranged for my son to be picked up from preschool and had a needle inserted into my spine. 

When I realized what room I was headed to, I couldn't breathe. I stood outside the door for a moment to gather myself, and then I realized that there was no gathering anything and I went in.

I couldn't let my person know I was scared. But I was terrified. We both were.

I text my mom a picture of the stupid horse picture on the wall that we fought about that entire day. 

My mom is the kind of person who can look at a cloud and say "Oh, I see a house with a three car garage and a Volvo out front". I am not that kind of person. She was convinced that she could see a face in the pattern on one of the horses. 

And her response to the picture made me cry. 

"Angi, that day changed your life and was so scary, celebrate the new you, you have grown so much and a lot of the things you were scared about that day you have learned about and tackled. Look in the mirror, baby, you have come so far!"

Today is still hard, but I finally got to laugh in a place where I cried so much.