Hello, My Name is Disoriented.

My clock says it is 4:10 AM on Friday morning.

In the past thirteen days, I have taken a taxi to Newark, flown to Seattle, took a cab to a hotel, took a ferry to Bremerton, took a taxi and a bus and a plane to Los Angeles and then, finally, a plane back to Newark.

I was in all these places, and everything was different but inside I was stagnant, the same. I was in pain and ignoring it and trying to look at the prism of my experience through what I saw and not how I physically felt. My stomach muscles ached from breathing but I did, in and out. In bars and restaurants and on the living room floor with Cece.

I landed in Newark on Sunday night, exhausted. I wept on the flight, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of. I leaned my head on a stranger’s shoulder out of instinct, and he looked up, confused and annoyed.

I slept briefly at home, drove north and held and played with some of my favorite people. I felt the curl of an newborn’s hand around my finger. I learned so much.

I drove home from Katie’s and accidentally passed out until midnight and have been up ever since, despite my overuse of Nyquil. (WHY. WON’T. YOU. WORK???)

I want to write about Seattle, and Bremerton and seeing Liz and Cece. I want to tell funny tales from my adventures in LA but right now, I am disoriented and exhausted and if you told me it was December, I’d probably believe you. (SANTA?!?)

I have pictures in my head, I have videos in my head of talks I had with Liz on the couch. I remember Cece’s laugh. Her sideways waddle, her sweet smile. I know the taste of the margaritas we had on Cinco de Mayo in LA. I know the quiet that Rachel and I share, and the laughter too. I know that visiting family is not a vacation: it is home, just in another place.

All these memories and moments happened and coincided with physical pain and maybe now, here at 4:10 on a Friday morning, I am letting myself feel it. Instead of pushing, pushing through I am letting myself lie awake and wash over me.

Maybe that’s why I cried on the flight home. Maybe that’s why I feel unfunny right now, why my face is red and I can’t really recognize myself. Why I’m bursting with fever. Maybe that’s why I want to stay in this sweatshirt and lay here until everything comes back, all the energy I once had.

I will but I’ll remember this: I live a full life, flush with experience and adventure and love. I am sick but I have everything else, here and there and even on the West Coast. So I will rest now, and let it stew, and I’ll come back to the photos, videos and memories and remember just how blessed I really am.

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Welcome Allie!

i was never very good with titles: So happy for my sister!

She just welcomed my latest niece and the 5th granddaughter for my parents. (She typed as she felt the weight of producing the first grandson heavy on her shoulders.)

I am really excited for her. And our whole family is relieved that there were no complications like after her first daughter,…

My cousin Katie, who produced this amazing child and scared the shit out of all of us doing so has given birth to Allison, another child for me to love and corrupt (I may have taught the other children a potentially annoying trick they call “bombs away”.)

We grew up close, spending weekends at my house, making pancakes and memorizing episodes of Full House. I’ll have you know that Liz can recite the entire Becky/Jesse wedding episode. (Jailhouse Rock as a wedding song? What a renegade that Jesse was!)

I remember so vividly the drive to meet my aunt, halfway between Lincroft and Kendall Park. My mom would open the car doors and Katie and Liz would jump in and I knew my weekend was made. Five and two years older than me (respectively), they taught me about “girl stuff” and together we invented a secret name for sex (I think it was apples, or something weird created as we snuggled on Aerobeds on Thanksgiving night.) As Liz reminded me, I constantly asked about “bubs” (boobs) and wondered when I would get them. (APPARENTLY GOD GAVE GENEROUSLY! Dammit.)

When I look back on my childhood summers, it seems every week was spent at their beach house in Long Beach Island, sleeping in twin beds and graciously applying Aloe to our Irish, sunburnt backs. Bagels and Fantasy Island tickets and boogie boards and a happiness so bright and blue that I can’t help but wish that everyone gets to experience what we had, at least once.

At Christmas, we created the Moe-Kel language and mocked my lack of domesticity. We discussed boys, wrote poetry, went to the mall and watched hours and hours of Friends episodes. (Whoopah!)

They were and are my older sisters. When Liz (see her post above, please) moved away, I was heartbroken. Same with cousin Moe-my favorite happy hour partner, gone to Australia.

We are a family, and a close one at that. But everything changes and the life that I have is not the same as theirs. Our children will not be months or even years apart, but that is okay.

I dream of leaving the tri-state area but really, I can’t imagine not being part of my f’nieces (fake nieces—the term I coined when no one made me godmother or let their children call me aunt) lives. I live for Emma’s sprint across the room when she sees me come through the door (KEWWWYYYY!!!). I love that five year old Suzie calls me from Geeky’s Blackberry and says “Crazy Cousin Kelly, will you come visit me?” or asks “Crazy cousin Kelly, will you teach me how to be crazy like you?” I love that Megan, who is shy and serious (my dad claims she was just like her Aunt Biz as a baby), screeches with laughter when I pretend to walk into a wall. (I’ll do anything for a laugh from that kid. Two and a half is a tough age.)

I fly to see Liz on Saturday and even though I’m exhausted from the past two weeks, I can’t wait to spend valuable time with her and Cece. Cece just turned one and I have only spent a few days with her so far. The first time I met her, she looked at me and promptly fell asleep on my shoulder. Thanks, kid. But I know from the days I spent with her after that she is a sweet, funny baby. I cannot wait to get to know her better.

I want my f’nieces to know what I know, to have what I have-this network of love, support and sisterhood. I know they will and I hope they know how much they mean to me. (I’m going to be crazy F’Aunt Kelly, sobbing at the college graduations and calling them my babies because I never mated. CALLING IT NOW!)

I am blessed to be able to fly out and see Cece and Liz this weekend. When I get back, I’ll meet Allie too.

I can’t wait.

(And Moe—you better not have any children in Australia. Crazy cousin Kelly’s vacation fund only goes so far!)

Guess who I get to see this weekend?

WOOOOO!

(Liz, I’m still pretty out of it so I’m going need to nap whenever Cece does. She’s also about to get a lesson in sharing, because I LIKE PASTINA AND BABY FOOD TOO!)

this is just how it is.

last week i was tripping all over the wires and wednesday i broke free, out of that small, crowded room with a screaming roommate and a pain so visceral i cringed.

the middle of it all is okay because i don’t have a choice but to live it. it is now, afterward, when i can do nothing else but remember it.

everything i understood left me when i took out my IV and discharged myself.

what remains is a blank space where all the things i can do, wanted to do, have disappeared.

when i came home, the phone was ringing off the hook. the screen was filled with one, two, three four text messages.

a stranger asks how i am feeling and i can talk to them. i spit scientific facts, details, banalities.

i know what to say to them. i am just a name on a chart.

but to the ones i love, i send out the mass text messages and forget to return calls.

i hibernate, because i don’t want to explain why instead of feeling better, i feel worse.

i am grateful for this flood of support, for all the ears straining to hear my complaints, for all those whose arms are outstretched, just waiting to help.

but i don’t want to be like this anymore.

i would like to walk ten miles and only complain about two.

i want to understand more than just the prick of the needle, the instantaneous pain.

i want to know what happens after.

i took out my IV myself, so why can’t i do more?

all i know is this: i want to go home.

with that hand on my back, with the curtains drawn.

no expectation. no explanation.

no need to do anything at all except sleep,

sleep,

sleep.

Wednesday Morning Incoherencies

I’m starting to think NYU had it wrong when they designed this hospital. The building is huge but each room is tiny and each day here feels like a WEEK.

My parents arrived in the morning after rounds. They crowded into my half of the room for only minutes before the space dissolved and my dad took the paper to the waiting room. He also stepped out to get me a computer charger, as I believed death would become me if I didn’t have Twitter to check. My mom fetched me Gatorade and actually tried to change my shirt for me before I reminded her that I’m 24, not 3. They stayed for most of the day until I got cranky and told them to go home.

I wasn’t in the mood for visitors to due to the fact that I look like I got some “work” done down in South America, but I had Meghan come by anyway. She’s good company and she promised to bring Chinese food. We’ve been friends since before I discovered eyeliner and hair straighteners, so she’s seen me in far, far uglier states. She stayed until I decided to try and go to sleep.

But sleep is impossible in the hospital so I listened to the attending doctor try to explain to a team of residents and medical students what was wrong with me. I listened for 5 minutes before I got bored and cranked up the music. Four songs later, the students and doctors came in and beckoned me to repeat “what happened this time” for the 30th time. (Here’s an idea, guys: check the fucking chart! It mentions it hurts to talk.) I pulled a bit of Helen Keller move on them: I didn’t say much, grumbled and made no eye contact. Rude, maybe, but it’s no fun to have 10 nerdy med students staring at you when you know you look like Joan Rivers: the Prequel.

Later, my rheumatologist came by and said I’d probably in here until the end of the week. Before she left, she cocked her head to the side in sympathy and said: “Poor Kelly Bergin, I’d hate to be you!”

I get this comment a lot. That and: “You’re always sick! God, I would never want your life!” I understand the sentiment behind both, but sometimes it sits me with me the wrong way and I never know how to respond.

I want to have a life that others want, too. I mean sure, I’m sick and my hair is badly dyed and I’m lying when I say I’m 5’2 but it’s not so bad, is it? Do you not see these blue eyes? These irises sparkle!

I’m livin’ the dream here, people!

Anyway, I’m here until Thursday unless my elaborate bribery plan works on the attending. I keep refreshing the new Hanson music video for entertainment and downloading episodes of Six Feet Under on iTunes. (Well, I was until I realized it’s not the best show to watch in the hospital…did you know people die on that show?). I just want to go home and back to sleep and eventually see the outside. There’s only a short time period in which I can take advantage of the official Kelly Bergin Mouth Sore Weight Loss Plan™, and that period is the next week. Soon my appetite will come back, and boy do I have plans with some complex carbohydrates and some good food. (Yuca, Supper, Frankie’s, Luke’s Lobster–I am coming for you.)

UPDATE: I tricked the residents into letting me come home early, as long as I rested, took mad drugzzz and ate and drank. Thanks for all the well-wishes, offers to visit, flowers, phone calls and messages. I appreciate it all, I really do.

Tuesday, 7 AM

The screams echoing in this hallway remind me of how primal we become in pain.

I haven’t slept in 24 hours and I can’t, really. I try but then nurses come in and yank on the overhead light and stick me with needles and I can’t do anything but lie here. They took me for a CAT scan at 3 AM and the bright, fluorescent lights of the hospital basement are burned on the inside of my eyelids. I’m hungry and my thoughts float to chicken. I haven’t eaten a lick of real food since Sunday evening. These IV bags full of suspiciously colored nutrients do not fill me up the way a KFC Double Down might.

It’s daylight now, and the sun is streaming through the windows and curtains.

I know I will fall asleep eventually and I know I’m exhausted because I’m obsessing over weird things, like where I’m going to get my haircut when I bust out of this joint. I decided in the bathroom mirror I need a cut and color, like immediately. (How have I been walking around with hair like this? Disaster!)

I am practicing yoga breaths and trying not to wonder why this is my fourth stay in less than a year.

My parents will be back in the city by noon and I have good, kind friends who will visit. I love them for it. But in the middle of the night, in the middle of this experience, I am alone. And at 5 am, I just think I want someone to put their hand on my back. I think I’d be able to sleep then. A big handprint on the small of my back.

Thinking about it both comforts me and makes me cry.

So instead of crying (because I don’t do that) I will play my embarrassing lite music hospital playlist and try to sleep some more, to breathe in and out and ignore the sounds and smells of this experience.

Update: They just brought my food and it’s various liquids designed to fill the belly of NO ONE. Seriously, are they kidding with this? Tea? Strawberry gelatin? IT’S NOT EVEN REAL JELL-O. I wonder if it’s against hospital policy to barter small, useless items found in my purse for microwaved cafeteria eggs.

Ha. Of course I would.

I am live-blogging this latest hospital stay, because why wouldn’t I?

I got to my room just a little while ago.

I came from the ER, where I spent 8 hours among the sick and the not so sick. Some had bloodied fingers and rupturing appendices and one man walked in and said he was having a heart attack. One woman complained Vicodin made her feel weird. I leaned over and told her that was kind of the point.

I don’t think she cared for me, but I was cranky and it was really cold in there, as if they were preparing the patients for the frigid morgue, just a few flights below.

The nurses fussed with my veins and stuck me four times. I felt proud, like I owned my body. I knew where to go and knew what I was doing when I said “Not this vein, not that one, do this one, not that one!”

I lifted up my neck to show scars, little proofs of battles.

It really happened, I can tell.

Sometimes people tell me how brave I am and comment on how much I have been through. I don’t know how to react. These things are both a source of pride and a huge open wound.

I’m not always brave and I don’t handle things well all the time. It’s easy to be good in hospitals, in doctor’s offices. I make jokes and brush off whatever they are throwing at me.

I’m not so brave in real life. I complain and skip pills and am mean to my family.

I don’t know how to write about this without seeming like a plea for sympathy or attention. But it’s not. These diseases are just as big of a part of my life as my relationships, my work, my family. They are here and present and permanent.

Living with sickness is like everything else and then, suddenly it is not.

Right now I am an outlier among peers, the youngest on my floor but Thursday I’ll be back at work and maybe Friday, at the bar? I will fit this sickness in on my planner and I will work around it and I thank God I have the support that I do, from my friends and family and coworkers and even this Internet community.

Gotta go. It’s CAT scan time.

Coming to you live from 1742, this is Kelly Bergin, signing off.