What Actually Happened to Me
In mid-2023, my body went through a massive physical storm. For about three months before going to the hospital, I was extremely sick, vomiting constantly, and unable to eat solid food. I lost over a quarter of my body weight. I was physically starving and severely dehydrated.
When I got to the emergency room on May 18, my organs were failing from starvation. To save my life, the doctors immediately gave me heavy IV fluids packed with sugar. While this saved my life, introducing sugar to a starving body triggered a dangerous internal chain reaction. My cells instantly drank up the sugar, which completely wiped out the very last drops of Vitamin B1 (thiamine) in my body.
Because the brain and nerves need Vitamin B1 to run, my nervous system experienced a sudden, severe power outage. This caused a metabolic brain injury and a massive state of confusion called medical delirium. I do not remember about three months of that year because my brain was completely offline. My brain was physically short-circuiting because it was starved of nutrients.
What I Am Dealing with Physically Today
The hospital treatment ultimately saved my life and cleared the brain injury, but the months of starvation left severe, long-term damage in my nervous system. I am currently in a long-term care VA hospital, working through a very slow rehabilitation process to rebuild these pathways. Here is what I am actively managing every day:
- Nerve Pain and Numbness (Neuropathy): The starvation damaged the nerves in both of my hands and my feet. Right now, I have a deep lack of sensation. If you touch my fingers or toes and I am not looking at them, my brain cannot register it. However, because these nerves are trying to heal, they constantly misfire. This causes a baseline state of numbness paired with constant, burning nerve pain.
- “Ghost” Muscle Tightness: Because my nerves are damaged, they send chaotic static signals to my brain. My brain misinterprets this static as physical compression. It makes me feel like there are heavy, tight belts wrapped around my biceps and across my diaphragm. My muscles are not actually locked up or frozen, but my brain's software makes it feel that way. My daily stretching helps tell my brain to drop this protective stance.
- Hearing Impairment: The crisis damaged the pathways that process sound from my ears to my brain. I cannot clearly process or hear entirely new music. To fight this, I use music therapy: I sing along to old songs that are deeply wired into my memory from before I got sick. This forces my brain to build new pathways to map and understand sound.
- Muscle Cramping and Standing: I went from being completely bedbound and unable to sit up to mastering independent wheelchair transfers and shuffling with my rollator. However, my deep core and back muscles are still heavily unconditioned. When I stand up, my lower back muscles try to do all the work, fatigue immediately, and lock up into painful cramps. This is why I have to sit down quickly to rest.
Where I Am Going From Here
Recovery from this kind of neurological and physical injury is slow. There is no shortcut for rebuilding damaged nerves, retraining the brain, restoring muscle strength, and teaching a body that has been through a major medical crisis how to function again. The work happens through repetition, rehabilitation, stretching, movement, music, and consistently challenging my body and brain to do a little more.
My doctors cannot guarantee that I will make a full recovery. There are simply too many variables involved, particularly when it comes to nerve damage and neurological healing. But they remain hopeful that, with continued rehabilitation and my determination to keep working, I can regain a significant amount of function and get as close to full recovery as my body will allow.
And that is exactly what I intend to find out.
My progress may be slow, but it has been steady. I have already gone from being completely bedbound and unable to sit up independently to transferring myself, using a wheelchair independently, and walking short distances with my rollator. Those changes did not happen all at once. They were built one movement, one stretch, one exercise, and one stubborn attempt at a time.
So I measure recovery differently now. I don't need dramatic leaps to know that something is happening. Sometimes progress is an extra few seconds on my feet. Sometimes it is a movement that hurts a little less than it did before. Sometimes it is recognizing a sound more clearly, stretching a little farther, or discovering that my body can do something today that it could not do six months ago.
Consistency is the key. As long as my body continues to respond, I will continue to give it opportunities to heal, strengthen, adapt, and relearn.
I don't know exactly where the finish line is.
But I'm still moving toward it.