It started the evening before I went to sleep. “I want to go back to my room,” I explained to my mother. I didn’t realize that I was already in “my room,” I had been in the same room for the past twelve days, since I was transferred out of the PICU. But for some reason I did not recognize this. I still did not even know why I was here. First they said it could be a stroke, then a rare infection, and now a doctor just came in and started talking about a rare disease called “autoimmune encephalitis.” There were a million questions on my mind. I already have one who-the-fuck-knows-what-that-is-disease, now two? And this one is in my precious brain? How much medicine will I have to take? And the question on everyone’s mind, WILL I EVER WALK AGAIN? I had been bedridden since I got here.
Eventually, I drifted off to sleep on my back, which I don’t normally do, because of sleep paralysis. But tonight I would have an even more vivid dream. Or was I awake and it actually happened? I don’t even remember. First, I took it upon myself to remove the nasogastric tube from my nose (which I later found out I was not supposed to do) because I decided I would be unable to fall asleep with that inside of me. Once asleep, I dreamt I was sleeping beside a see-through curtain. On the other side of the curtain was a vast pool of cold water filled with ice sculptures of dragons, tigers, and other animals. My arm left rested straight and faced up as I had an IV in my vein. I was in a very comfortable position but of course I had the urge to urinate so when the patient care technician, someone who I had met several times before but did not recognize, passed by I asked for a urinal (a container about the shape and size of a water bottle) to pee into.
When I looked around the room, everything was dark and I thought the hallway opposite my bed was much longer than it really was. The only source of light was the pool. I was very confused until it dawned on me: I WAS IN THE WRONG HOSPITAL! Oh no, I thought, I had sleep walked to a different hospital that has a giant pool in it!I’m not supposed to be here, what am I going to do? I told the patient care technician to tell the night shift nurse to come speak with me, and she obliged. It felt like an eternity before the nurse arrived. When he finally appeared, he checked my IV and then asked me what was wrong. I looked at him with a straight face and explained “I am in the wrong hospital. You see, I am a stroke patient at Maimonidies hospital. Not this hospital.” He looked at me like my seventh grade teacher looked at me when she caught me using my phone during class. He then said “Ok.” and walked away. At this point I was incredibly confused, I wondered how I was going to get back to the hospital I was supposed to be at. I imagined my parents or an ambulance would come pick me up and drive me. How will my insurance react to this whole situation? How often does something like this happen? I eventually fell back to sleep, but not until I had compulsively picked at the tape around my IV and almost having it come out (if that had happened, it wouldn’t have been the last time).
The next morning, I woke up and could recognize I was in the hospital I was supposed to be in. For some reason I still believed that every day I was waking up in a different room (I later found out that I was in the same room for my entire stay except for when I was in the ICU). It was around 7:00 am, which is around the time that Logan, the medical student who decided to visit my room to check on me every single morning without fail, usually arrives. But first, two doctors came in my room and asked me about what had happened last night. They asked me questions that the doctors liked to ask me every single day, like “Where am I?” “What year is it?” “What season is it?” “Who is the President (almost got this one wrong)?” If my mother was there, they would point to her and ask me “Who is that?” But this time there were additional questions, like “How did you get to another hospital?” I said I had sleep walked there. “But you can’t even regular walk, how could you have sleep walked?” I shrugged my shoulders. “What was the name of this other hospital?” At this point I had realized that I had not come up with a name for the mysterious oasis. I thought back to my answers to the previous questions, and imagined the cold room with a pool filled with ice sculptures, and said “The Winter Hospital.” “The Winter Hospital?” I said yes, that was the name. By this time I had come to accept that it was only a dream and that I had embarrassed myself. The doctors told me to tell them if anything like this happened again, and then left me alone.
Soon, Logan arrived as expected. He asked me how I was doing, I said I was good but that I had a weird dream last night. He then asked what happened to my nasogastric tube. Now, you must be thinking: I am a horrible patient. I took out the tube, picked at my IV, and bothered the nurse and the doctors about some stupid dream. But some days earlier I had also decided to remove my electroencephalogram (EEG) helmet before I was supposed to, and the neurologist ordered a repeat EEG. So I said, “Do you remember what happened to my EEG helmet?” and he responded, “Come on, no way, you weren’t supposed to do that.”
Maybe I did do things I wasn’t supposed to but every day I woke up and I still tried to get better. I ate more food and paid more attention to how my body was feeling. I lost a bit of weight over the course of my hospital stay but I was able to gain it all back pretty quickly afterwards. I managed to pull through from my lowest point and I am proud of myself for it.
