I like to consider myself a happy, strong person. I’m also terribly stubborn. I’ve been called stubborn and strong by my friends. I don’t like being told I can’t do something because of one thing or another, it just makes me more determined to do it. I’ve been through stuff in my life that caused me to be tough. It was, get tough or get out, so I got tough.

This toughness came from essentially growing up in a hospital. I bounced in and out of the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) for the first couple years of my life. I actually spent the first year in the PICU. Spending more time in a hospital bed than I did in a school desk did two things for my personality. It made me tough and stubborn, it also made me terrified of doctors, nurses, and hospitals.

Most people have nightmares about being kidnapped, being eaten, or having some deformed monster with multiple heads living under their beds. My nightmares, more often than not, were about being admitted to the hospital.

I am very good at hiding this fear and anxiety of hospitals but because I am so good at hiding it, it grows until I disintegrate into a puddle of tears. Normally on a hospital bed. This past week I was admitted to a hospital in Calgary to have a range of tests done to see if I am eligible for a different kind of ventilation device, called a phrenic nerve pacemaker if it works I could get my trach out.

During this current hospital stay I have had two break downs, one in the sleep lab, then one yesterday. Neither had a good reason, or based in reality in any way. None the less there I was, bawling like a baby about having wires attached to my head.

Sometimes the moment when you need to be tough and to save face, you just don’t have any more strength in you to keep the act up.