Just Raven

The last thing I remember thinking about was killing myself. I woke up to a brightly lit room with a cold draft rushing over me. I felt something hard down my throat (it was a intubation tube). You can’t talk or swallow or move your lips with one of these hooked up. I also felt a mask over my face (it was a re-breather)…I tried to move my hands, but they wouldn’t budge. (They were restrained with ties downs). It was scary as hell.

I could move my eyes around, and that is when I saw Jimmy. He was standing over me, looking kind of weird and strange. Then he was gone. I thought I was in some nightmare. I wanted to wake up because it felt so real. Then a man stood next to me with a nurse…he was a doctor. They asked me to use my eyes to communicate with them:
Two blinks for YES and one blink for NO. (The same sequence used to this day for people coming out of comas who cannot talk).

He asked me if I knew my name, which he said…I blinked twice, really hard in case they missed it. He told me I had been in a coma for 96 days; the date was February 14th 1982. He told me I had been found in SLC almost dead from a heroin overdose. Then it all came back-Janine, the blood, the horror of it all. I must have tried to cry or something because they quickly knocked me right out. When I woke up the next time, the tube was out and I could swallow and know I was doing it. And I could move around a little. I was hooked up to machines and a cath, had little probes on my chest and felt….miserable. felt like I was going to throw up. I was cold. I wanted out of that place.

I way laying on the cold hospital bed, shaking and scared when it happened. At first I didn’t know what is was. My hands got stiff and I couldn’t move them; then I smelled burning rubber; then I started seeing everything in double. Then my eyes rolled up and I could feel my body start to really shake. I don’t remember anything else.
It was a seizure. The first of many. A direct result of the heroin overdose. And a lifelong issue for me.