Feeling Hospital Blue

Feeling Hospital Blue is an abridgement of what “better” looks like. After spending 39 days in the hospital, I learned that not everyone leaves the hospital better. Sometimes better looks like the last resort, it looks like maintenance, it looks like things not getting worse. Better, in my circumstances meant a feeding tube into my small intestines when we couldn’t reverse the paralysis of my stomach muscles with conservative treatments. I never knew what forever felt like until I spent 39 days in the hospital while ceaselessly watching my body fail. At the 31 day mark of being inpatient, I was swarmed by defeat from my body failing me, and I longed for the life outside of those four hospital walls. I yearned for the days in which I could sleep without being hooked up to multiple lines pumping artificial substances into me trying to keep me alive. I wanted nothing other than to feel even just slightly less ill. The day I left the hospital I felt like I was drowning in my own anxiety because I had become so accustomed to the four walls of my hospital room that circumscribed my life. As much as I strongly despised it, the hospital almost became my safety net. Leaving the hospital also meant that the trauma of what had occurred over those 39 days would begin to sink in. As peculiar as this may be, I forgot how colourful the world was outside of the hospital. It wasn’t this mundane, worn out, shade of blue that was the hospital gown, the walls of my room, the bed sheets, and the blankets. There, was, colour. I kept thinking about this, probably more than I should have, but if the saying “feeling blue” was a colour– it would be that hospital blue colour. It would be the colour of the hospital gown, the walls of my room, the bed sheets, and the blankets. A part of me could not let go of this. I was discharged and was no longer surrounded by that shade of blue, but a part of the hospital never left– it came home with me. I feel that particular shade of blue every time I run my medical regiment. And every time I put on that blue hospital gown, the trauma of those 39 days hits a little deeper. Feeling Hospital Blue is a depiction of what it’s like to come to the realization that I am not actually better.