emme2844

5.4.17 – 5.7.17

So I didn’t leave.

They gave me more pain medication, and it dulled the edges enough that I could breathe again. Not fixed—just steadied. The doctors wanted to keep me for observation until they felt confident I was stable.

Time in the hospital doesn’t move forward in a straight line. It loops. It blurs. It becomes lights in the hallway at 3 a.m., the quiet beep of machines, the way nurses learn your name and then your body faster than you do.

My best friend Rachel stayed with me through it. She spent the night for a few of those nights, and that changed everything. My husband was working, so having her there—funny, present, unafraid of the heaviness of it—made the room feel less like a waiting place and more like a small, temporary version of normal life.

We laughed. We watched movies. We talked to nurses and whoever else came through the door. For moments at a time, it almost felt like nothing was wrong.

There were a lot of visitors. It was my first time staying in a hospital for more than a passing moment, and I didn’t yet understand what it would feel like to be seen like that for days on end—still, unshowered, weak, existing in a body that no longer felt like something I could present neatly to the world.

People came because they loved me. Because they wanted to help. And I did feel that love—deeply, gratefully. I still do when I think back on it.

But there’s something no one really tells you about being that sick for that long: you become physically humbled in ways you can’t prepare for. When you haven’t showered in days because you’re too weak to stand long enough, when your hemoglobin is low and you’re running on transfusions instead of strength, when your hair is greasy and your body doesn’t feel like your own anymore—it becomes hard to be “on” for people, even the people you love most.

Not because you don’t want them there.

But because you can feel yourself disappearing a little, and you don’t have the energy to hold yourself together in front of an audience.

I only understood that afterward, looking back.

And still—I don’t want to dismiss the love that filled that room. It mattered. It carried me through more than I realized at the time.

That experience is part of why I started Hello Sunshine.