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This will be the last post describing what I went through in the hospital. From now on, I will be focused on healing. Of course, healing my body, but also nurturing my spirit and my craft.

This ordeal has been God’s way of slowing me down. I have always known that I needed to “live life to the fullest” and “truly focus on what’s important,” but I did not do it. So he decided to rattle my hard headed self, forcing me to refocus.

The brain aneurysm, the surgery, the stroke; it’s still hard to wrap my head around it all. This has truly been an insane seven weeks. It’s flown by, but at the same time, it went by slowly.

I am most thankful to my family as well as immediate and long-lost friends who’ve rallied behind me, opening their hearts enough to send out a prayer and positive energy. I felt this love in a way that is indescribable.

In this long recovery and healing process, it is my hope to truly inspire. I understand my journey will be completely different than anyone else’s, as we all have our own crosses to bear, but I hopefully you can learn something from it.

Lastly, I am grateful for the lessons I’ve learned thus far, and will continue to learn. Some of the lessons are new, and others, I just needed to get reacquainted with them.

1.  Focus on what’s truly important in life. It took me staring at death to truly refocus. Just think about the things you simply can’t live without. (And no, your iPhone cannot be on the list.)

2.  Inner strength is not an option. You must always have fight in you. The moment you give up, it’s over.

3.  You are more loved than you know. There are people near and far to support you.

4.  People’s true faces are revealed in times of turmoil. Some friends step up, others step down.

5.  Always maintain a positive attitude and a sense of humor. This will undoubtedly affect the people around you. Not just family and friends, but the doctors and nurses. You definitely want the person performing your brain surgery to like you.

6. Your whole life can change in a moment. My life seven weeks ago looks dramatically different than my life right now. No wheelchair, no walker, no eye patch, and no fanny pack.

7.  Life is hard, but at the same time, it is very simple.

8.  Even if you think you’re going through hell, there is always someone in a worse predicament than you are.

9.  Stop and think about the lessons life is offering you every single day.

10.  You don’t need everything; the basics will do. You can’t keep up with the Jones when you’re stuck in a hospital bed.

I have spent the last three weeks in an inpatient rehabilitation hospital. When I first was rolled in the door, I had a whatever-it-takes attitude, willing and ready to do anything to aide my healing.

I knew it would be a lot physical and occupational therapy–at least three hours a day–but what I was not prepared for was the hopelessness that polluted the air with every exhalation of other patients.

I could see it in their eyes, I could see it in their carriage, I could hear it in their voice, I could feel it from their hearts. I had mentally prepared myself to fight for my health, but I hadn’t a clue I would have to fight for my good spirits.

Some people lost their hope somewhere along their lengthy, painful journey. Others never had it to begin with.

One patient, who had a litany of problems–cancer, congestive heart failure, and a blood clot in his lungs–turned to me and asked, “What’s the point?” I just offered him a sympathetic eye but not a word, as I knew no answer for him. I knew my answer, but not his.

Responding to my silence, he asked me again, “What’s the point?” Knowing I wouldn’t get away with not answering, I said to him, “You have to find that one thing you can’t live without, focus on that and make it your reason for living. Just that one thing.” He looked at me, “Yeah, my aunt said the same thing.” I knew he was lost.

But all was not lost.

I met a woman, rough life, with an even rougher road to cross. At the end of July, her car was struck by a drunk driver. Her fiancé was killed instantly, her one son had cuts on his face from the shattered glass, and her other son had serious head injuries. Her sons are eight and four years old, respectively. She was at the bedside of her four year old at rehab, shortly after his brain surgery.

Of all of the people I met–with stories just as tragic–she was the only one who planned to use this experience as fuel for future positivity. She vowed to petition for a stoplight at that particular intersection, as her fiancé was the tenth person to die there in five years. She also recognized that her small town did not have a crisis center and planned to put her anticipatory degree in psychology for good use.

I admired and related to her. I appreciated her strength and determination to take the bad and make it good. She planned to move on with her life with no complaints. And though our situations are different, I just wanted to do the same thing.

For me, it was death or a stroke. You see which one I “chose” (or maybe which one chose me). Sure, I can’t walk really well and my smile is really crooked, but I’m going to keep walking and smiling because I am alive. And to truly be alive, I must live for what matters the most, the things that I can’t live without.

Only after being transferred from the ICU to a hospital room, did I become fully aware of my debilitated body. Don’t get me wrong, I knew about all of my symptoms, but until I tried to function independently did I begin to understand how the stroke had truly affected my being.

My vision had improved slightly–meaning that my eyes were no longer wild, each eye moving about like pin balls–but I still could not see. I could not see the words in a book, a computer, or even a television. My eyes only delivered a blurred landscape with shadowy figures. My waking hours were spent with an eye mask. The only time the eye mask was removed was for visiting doctors and trips to the restroom.

I say trips to the restroom, not because it was far away–the private bathroom was 6 feet away–but because I could not stand on my own two feet (not mention the IV dangling from my right arm, the oxygen monitor on my left arm, and the circulation pumps on both legs). I had such intense vertigo I did not which way was up or down. I needed a human crutch to assist me to, in, and from the restroom.

And even though I couldn’t see very well, this did not stop me from trying to journal. I tried to write in my journal, but it was large, incomprehensive markings. My mother, figuring the journal was too small, tried to remedy this by purchasing a large notebook. No luck, everything I wrote could be easily trumped by a kindergartener.

I also noticed that my right hand was wild and uncoordinated. Without deep concentration my flailing right hand would careen into a cup of juice, knocking it over. Or when I wanted to simply scratch an itch on my face, my hand would fly towards my face and hit my eye. I even had to cut all of my fingers nails off because the nurses were afraid that I would injure my face between the wild hand and the numbness on the right side of my face.

Half of my face was completely paralyzed. There was no movement on the right side, I couldn’t even close my eye. It was as if someone drew a line straight down my face and injected a permanent form of Novocain. I could feel one side of my nose, but not the other; I could move one side of my mouth, but could not open the other side. My speech was undoubtedly affected as well as my ability to keep food in my mouth; each meal was half in my belly and half on my belly. Needless to say, I changed hospital gowns frequently.

Also my hearing was completely gone in my right ear. I would instinctively put the phone to that ear, harshly reminded that I could hear nothing. I quickly began saying “Speak into my good ear.” I figured one day I would have to say these words, but at the age of 81 not 31.

There is one advantage to having all of these symptoms at 31, just within the four days in the hospital room, I was making vast improvements. So much so, even the doctors were surprised. I attribute this mainly to my “young” age–my body can fight harder, stronger, and longer than someone twice my age–combined with my will to get better.

The doctors’ prognosis is that I will be operating at 90 percent after six months to a year. But this timeframe would have to include a lot of physical therapy. More specifically, three weeks of inpatient therapy at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and an indefinite amount of time in outpatient therapy.