In my head I was curled up in the corner of the ceiling of the ICU room where I’d been, since surviving a five-hour surgery that saved my life. I was looking down at myself. Naked eye observing&grasping for life, wanting to live, but pretty sure I was about to go to the other side and see mommy and S. again.

But I wasn’t floating on the ceiling. I was in this bed, wires and tubes coming out of every part of my body. Little sips of air. The pain lesser than it had been dozens of hours ago when I’d arrived at the emergency room. But still I lived.

What I had actually survived was the rupturing of my stomach; sepsis; and peritonitis.

In more accessible language? My tiny gastric bypass pouch developed a hole; everything I’d eaten or drank in the days before and all the attendant gastric juices flooded my body with poison and air.

I survived the failings of the doctors I mistakenly trusted with my life. And who discounted me and my complaints.

Guess what, motherfuckers? I was unfortunately right. And you nearly left my 5-year-old daughter without a mother.

Whatisgoingon? My head tilted right, looking at the Angel.

Your blood pressure. It’s Ahhh a. Little low. I think you should call your husband and have him come.

Am I going to die? I asked.

Well, not if I can help it, the Angel said.

She picked up the phone and dialed.

Come now. Please come now. My blood pressure is sixty over forty and I’m fading. Please. Tell L. I love her, and come. Come now.

I don’t actually remember D coming for me, but he did.

What I remember is three days later, being moved to a surgical recovery floor. Waiting outside the room where I would spend 12 days.

I didn’t know they would be the most miserable 12 days of my life; that I would pray to die; that I would be left to shit myself on a bed; that I would be mocked by a low-paid nursing assistant for needing help; that I would spend hours waiting outside X-ray and cat scan rooms as complication after complication set in.

That I would cry with a roommate who had a stomach ailment, and pray to be moved when they brought to my room an old lady with the most repulsive gas I have ever smelled, causing me to retch and heave.

Where I looked skyward and prayed to just fucking die.

A few years ago, the local newspaper did a story about hospitals and their safety records for patients. The hospital where I was at, in 2005, failed miserably. They had patients die from things that were survivable. Die from things that were hospital-induced. I wasn’t surprised.

This was a place where a nurse, who was high, left me to my bed with a potassium drip. Potassium must be given with saline. But this dumb cunt was high: she left my bed about 3 minutes before the potassium started dripping into my arm, alone, unfettered.

When it started to drip into my body without Saline? It. Was. Excruciating. I called the emergency nurses desk by pressing the button. They ignored me. Then told me, “It can’t be that bad.”

It was worse. I felt like someone was putting acid into my veins. So I ripped it out. And they weren’t happy. Neither was I.

A few days later. I was in the shared bathroom. I had 8 intravenous lines into my body. I had my period and diarrhea. So: liquid coming out of every hole south of my tits. Sat there for 16 minutes until I called for help. I literally was too weak to lift myself from the terlet bowl. So I pulled and pulled.

I shit myself. I wiped as best I could and I needed help.

Yeah ok in a minute.

Which turned into 65 minutes.

Suddenly there I am. She: her lovely lilting Jamaican accent washing over me like a rogue wave.

Why you crying mama? You alive. STAHP. Get up and get out.

But I need help. I can’t stand up by myself. I need you to lift me.

No mama: you need to get up.

Except I couldn’t. I was weak and sick and I’d given up. And she was not happy.

I never did get that help but I know what it means to advocate for myself.