Don't Go Into the Light

The day I almost died

They say that before you die, you see a white light. Meant to guide you to the afterlife, this is the last thing you see before you leave the physical world. What the hell does it mean that the last thing I saw before I almost died was an orange light?

I’ll never forget sitting alone in that empty, dimly lit doctor’s waiting room. My parents were discussing with my orthopedist, a doctor who I had seen since the day I was born, how bad my scoliosis had gotten. The curve of my spine was over 40 degrees and would eventually crush my heart if left untreated. At this point, having a titanium rod screwed on to my spine was my last and only option.

The fear I felt on the morning of February 1, 2005 was overwhelming. Being only 14 years old, I still had so much life ahead of me and I thought it would instantly end on that operating table, or at best result in paralysis. Not that it really mattered, considering I knew I would never walk again. But, I thought I had enough problems as it was.

The anesthesiologist asked me to count backwards from 100. 100, 99, 98, 97…

Have you ever woken up and not know where you are, or be in a total state of confusion? I can’t really describe the feeling I had, but imagine waking up with a tube up your nose, down your throat, up your dick (“dick” is gender-neutral here), and being completely blind. Easy. The only thing you hear are the beeps from various hospital machines and your uncle calling out numbers to Bob Barker on the television.

Turns out, being on your stomach with your body tilted down for 4 hours straight is really bad for your optic nerves. I was fully without my sight for 2 days, what felt like 2 weeks when you can’t move in a hospital bed. It wasn’t all bad, though. They gave me a button I could push whenever I wanted needed morphine to help with the pain. That button became my best friend. Nurses had to literally pull it out of my hand when I was discharged 10 days after my back was sliced open.

Adjusting to life back home was difficult. My body had just gone through something radical and I couldn’t adjust to it to save my life (this is called “foreshadowing”). I could never get comfortable, couldn’t eat or drink anything because my throat was so irritated from being on a ventilator for 6 days, and I couldn’t sleep. Like, REALLY couldn’t sleep. I would wake up every hour, every night. Put all of this together and my body would never heal and eventually shut down.

My will to live was failing even faster. For the first time in my life, I thought about suicide. I wasn’t depressed, but I was terrified to live the rest of my life in constant pain and discomfort. It’s weird to think that the better option is to end it out of mercy, but there I was. In reality, those thoughts lasted only a few days after I realized I was physically incapable of killing myself. Plus, I wanted to see the Yankees win another championship, so I figured I would stick around.

One day, 5 weeks after I left the hospital, I felt worse than usual. My father kept asking me if I wanted to get checked out but I said no every time. It would pass, I was just having a bad day. My bar for having a “good day” was pretty much on the floor. I went to bed that night and woke up every hour, as I had normally done. At around 2 am, I got up to go to the bathroom. I guess I didn’t look too hot because my father asked me again if I wanted to go to the hospital. This time, I agreed.

If I said no, like I did every other time before that, I would have gotten back in bed, fallen asleep, and never woken up.

I don’t remember much on the car ride to Hackensack hospital’s pediatric emergency room. I was slipping in and out of consciousness the whole time. The last thing I remember seeing was the bright orange neon sign from a diner. Almost two minutes still away from help, I took what was almost my last breath.

I’ve heard about having severe complications from surgery but I never thought it would happen to me until it almost killed me. My back surgery gave me pneumonia and rendered my right lung almost completely useless, but I was too weak to realize. Because I wasn’t eating, I weighed under 40 pounds. After putting me on life support and getting my oxygen up and carbon dioxide down (normal is low 20’s, mine was almost 50), the team of nurses worked quickly to stabilize me. They gave a drug called Ativan to keep me knocked out, but unfortunately, they shot me up with a little too much.

I woke up a day and a half later. I had a cap on my head to monitor my brain activity because the doctors weren’t sure if I would have brain damage from being oxygen deprived and in a drug-induced coma. I also felt those familiar tubes up my nose, down my throat, and up my dick again. However, I wasn’t blind this time. Not as exciting.

A bunch of other stuff happened, like developing a massive bedsore on my lower back and having my chest cut open to have a tube put in my lung while I was awake, but we’ll skip those parts for now. I ended up being in the hospital for an entire month and my life has never been the same since. The mental scars from PTSD will stay with me until the next lung infection accomplishes what the first one didn’t.

5 minutes was all I had left until my heart would stop beating. I don’t think I need to experience anything else to understand the concept of “life is short.” Whether it was divine intervention or the universe telling me it wasn’t my time yet, I do everything I can to cherish every ventilator-assisted breath I take.

The day I almost died was 18 years ago tomorrow. My near-death experience is now old enough to vote. They grow up so fast. I plan on commemorating that day by telling the people closest to me that I love them and having a really strong drink. I suggest you periodically do the same.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, please reach out for help. You make a difference in the world.

Solidarity forever.

-Steve