A year ago, in March 2023, I spent nine weeks in hospitals. I remember the day I almost died. It was not life-changing or life-affirming. No tunnels, lights, angels, or life on replay in slow motion. Just me monologuing. Gasping for breath.
I was breathing three units of Oxygen through my nose, but I wasn’t getting enough. The staff upped the dose to five units and administered it through a face mask. I was gasping. They were pushing on a string. I wasn’t getting the Oxygen. Instead, I was gasping like a fish out of water.
No lights – just monologue. Being contemplative, I do this often anyway. I remember telling myself, just pick a side; flip a coin; in or out; live or die. I was indifferent to the outcome. I just wanted the suffering to end. Full stop. I had no investment in either outcome. I’ve lived a good life. I was at peace. I am at peace. A year on, and I’m still recovering.
The last thing I remember was telling a nurse, “I think you need to intubate me.”
“We might have to; she replied.
The next day, I awoke with tubes down my throat after an emergency surgery to drain fluid around my heart.
I can’t claim to have experienced a near-death experience, NDE, but I was on the threshold. There was no other side. No pleading. No review. Just me in the world I was thrown into – what Heidegger termed Geworfenheit.
This is all of us. Here without volition. Just trying to make it through. Before this incident, I didn’t believe in ageing. I was invincible. I lived life like a younger person, and no end was in sight.
Perhaps I was too quick to say this was not life-changing. Now, I realise the fragility in life – at least I was fragile. I aged overnight – and then some. Overshot my chronological age. This is where I remain. Vulnerable.
Although I’d like to return to work, I am still not employable. Besides all of the medical visits and physiotherapist, my ankle is broken, awaiting repair, and my hands still don’t quite work. I can type. I’m typing this. Slowly. Twenty words a minute. Lots of backspacing. A computer application might assist with this, but none do quite so. This translates to a twenty per cent productivity output. Not great.
I’ve always considered myself to be a knowledge worker, but I never realised how much I still need my hands. I’m not just a brain in a vat. I need to engage with the world.
I am recovering – slowly and not without setbacks. Still, I persist. I took the road less travelled. Might I have been better off taking the other road? It’s hard to say.
Cognitively, we humans have an endowment effect: We value what we have. For now, I have life. Irrational or otherwise, I’ll cling to it. I’ll hope for a better tomorrow, but hope floats. Hope and a dollar won’t buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. It’s a vapid yet very human fiction. I hope this next year will be better than the last. Let’s see where it goes.
Philosophics 