You never know what life hands you and I guess that is the beauty of it. But when it hits you so hard you see the light at the end of the tunnel your entire universe shifts and you realise what is important and what is just junk you can live without.

Being hooked to machines, hearing the alarms on the monitors and seeing your blood pressure drop to a critical level, intensive care doctors hovering around you trying to tell you that you will not die is so surreal. It’s not a Greys Anatomy episode but pure reality. My own reality. I am a pin cushion with IVs on both arms. I am just on a hospital bed waiting for a blood transfusion and a surgery, waiting to be put to sleep and I think: “Is this it? Is my life going to end now?” I don’t want to leave my daughter without a mother. I still have hopes and dreams and I want to live. I look at the nurses and doctors around me and I somehow calm down. I tell them I need to live. I want more from this life. This is not my ending. One nurse grabs my hand and squeezes it so hard so I can actually feel it and she tells me I am so brave and I need to fight this. She tells me she won’t let me die and somehow I believe her.

She was told I came to A&E on my own bleeding out and she took it upon herself to take care of me and be there for me till the end. I don’t feel brave. Not at all. I don’t even know what I feel or if I feel anything apart from pain. I know I am calm or it’s just the shock and adrenaline. It is something that makes me go on and I have no idea what.

I am wheeled on a stretcher in the operation room and some other people tell me what will happen now. They say I will fall asleep. Yes please. I want to sleep. Do whatever now. I want this to be over. Please let me sleep. I look around and I close my eyes.

It is the end of something.

I have no idea how long it took. I am opening my eyes and a nurse is looking at me smiling. She says hello. I keep closing and opening my eyes trying to realise what happened. I wish I was in a dream but no. It happened. I did come here bleeding out, I was close to death, I had a surgery and this is the recovery room. I survived it. I look at my arms and there are still IVs on both arms and I can see blood around them. The nurse tells me we are waiting to be transferred in a room. I asked what happened and she tells I lost more blood than they expected and they had to make a transfusion. My blood pressure below the critical level and I had to have an emergency surgery but she is sure I won’t need more blood pumped into me. She said I am strong and I can do it. I am trying to lift myself up but I can’t. I just lay there and I can feel tears rolling down my face. I can’t help it. They keep rolling and I let them. I am sobbing and this horrible sound is coming out of my throat. I don’t recognise it. It’s not me but I know it is. The nurse gives me a hug and she pats my back. “It’s over now. You are ok now”. It’s all she says but I know it’s not over. I am alive and this means I have to get myself together, I have to learn a different type of strong, I have to reinvent myself and learn to let go. This is the hardest part. Recover, reinvent and let go. Move on. I feel rage. I am angry at the world and I don’t understand why me. I start thinking what have I done wrong. Was it something I done? Was I that bad that God decided to punish me? Why me? Why now? Just tell me why. I need to understand and when I ask I only get one answer: “We don’t know. Not even science is that advanced to actually tell us why”

Great. I almost died and medicine doesn’t know why. I need to find my own answers. But I am too tired now. I close my eyes again and I let tears fall. I am helpless and weak. I feel nothing but pain. Excruciating pain coming from my soul. It’s not physical but worse. It’s the emotional pain. That one that is playing with your mind, letting insane thoughts run free. It’s not safe. I wanted to die for a moment there but closing my eyes it all comes back to me. I know I have to wake up and be strong. My daughter is perfect but she still needs me. I have to reinvent myself for her. I don’t care what they will do to me but I know I need to be completely fixed so I can go back home, hold her so tight and kiss her all over. Hold her forever and take care of her and offer her my life. She is the reason I am alive. I have to fight for her and get better. I open my eyes and I am not crying anymore. I see the IV line and this time it’s not something that makes me think of death but of life. It gives me life and it’s good. I need it.

I done it. I survived and I did it alone. Now I have to be strong and wait to recover so I can go back home.

PS: this is a post I will not share on any of my social media accounts as none of my friends or family know what I have been through in the past week. Maybe when I will feel strong enough I will be able to tell them. I felt like I need to share my story here so it can sink in and make me realise it actually happened and it’s what life gave me to deal with. My days were just hours – hours with pain and hours without it.