"ET Phone Home"

Sometimes it feels like life exists in two universes - the real world, and the hospital/IBD/sick world: the latter is my current residence. A simple ‘snip and clip’ - well, okay, an ostomy - should have done the trick, but my bowels weren’t done with me yet. And so, I have decided to grace multiple ERs with my latest GI woes.

I suppose it’s like hearing your name in a crowd - you could be totally consumed in listening to music or talking to someone, but if you thought you heard your name, you would somehow hear it. Or like a second language: you don’t need to think about it all the time, but you are fluent in either language. I feel that way when it comes to hospitals - as soon as I’m back in this environment, I remember that the blood pressure cuff can’t go on the same arm as the IV, the fancy, technical name of my surgery, the warning speech about my thick skin/rolly veins, and on and on and on. It’s as if I’d never left. The medical world went on, despite my brief vacation, the same beeping noises of IVs and kids in oversized Johnny shirts.

While it is an outright lie to say that I’m alone here - my cousins and friends would likely protest - I’m in a different city (and country for that matter) from my parents, and in that sense, virtually alone. My Mom suggested a skype date, which seemed like a rather odd application to use it to ‘visit’, but a reasonable one nonetheless. I wish there was a better way to call home, or be with my family, but such are the constraints of going to school ‘abroad.’

I’d like to think I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl, I smile at the nurses despite the multiple blood draws stabs and try my best to be of medical help to the doctors by using their language. This is my second home - regardless of city, country, etc. - a hospital is a hospital is a hospital, and it may be another universe, but it’s home.

Unlike ET, I’m not stuck on the wrong planet - I’m just stuck in the middle of both worlds. But soon I will be back in the ‘real’ world, where skype is meant for catching up, food is allowed to be eaten, pain is non-existent, IVs don’t exist - and blogs are meant for happy reports of a life despite IBD.

Jennie