Shawn P. B. Robinson

This post is a continuation of a series looking back to my experience in 2017 with Encephalitis. For the previous post, click here.

Saturday, February 4, 2017

On Saturday, I was placed in an isolation room in the hospital. An isolation room is a strange thing. As you sit in your bed with the negative air pressure, you realize that by placing you in that room, they are declaring you to be dangerous to the rest of the world. They are essentially protecting the world from you. It is a strange feeling…

While in the isolation room, the doctors and nurses would come in, all dressed up in gowns and masks and more as a means of protecting themselves from me. I was clearly dangerous, and they knew it.

One of the things I learned on the Saturday was that the hospital had a policy of giving belly needles every day to patients. This may not seem like a big deal, but every morning they would come into my room around 6:30 am and shove a needle into my belly. It hurt–a lot! Every day I would dread the thing, and I think they kind of enjoyed it. I don’t want to speak ill of them, but I suspect they looked forward to my cry of pain. It hurt every single time!

One of the other things I faced on the Saturday was a growing realization that the encephalitis diagnosis was far more serious than I had thought.

The doctors had not, unfortunately, given me much information. There are two reasons for this: first, most doctors do not know an awful lot about encephalitis; second, even if they do know a lot about it, they do not know what the results will be until they happen.

What I was dealing with (Zoster Encephalitis) was a viral infection in the brain. That meant that I could potentially walk away relatively unscathed, but it was also possible I might never walk again. Encephalitis can leave you crippled, unable to speak, unable to think straight, or it can even take your life. Only time would tell.

The doctors could not give me much information because all they could do was get the antivirals in me and hope for the best.

I was 40 years old at the time. I have a young wife who somehow manages to remain in her early 20s despite the ravaging of time that attacks my weary body. My sons, Liam and Ezra, were young as well (13 and 7). It is hard to face your own mortality when you think of your wife and kids. I did not want my wife to be left a widow. I did not want my boys to grow up without their dad.

It was during the time in the hospital that I had to face some pretty difficult truths about how uncertain my future was and what I could not do about it.

I think it was on that day that I started to write. I decided I would write a bedtime story for my sons. I often made up and told them stories so I thought I would type one out for them. As time wore on, I learned that writing is excellent therapy for the brain and have been encouraged by many medical practitioners to continue doing it. At the time, however, I thought that if I died, I wanted my boys to have a  story to enjoy after I was gone.

I know that sounds morbid… but it was part of the process for me.

To be continued…

To follow the next part of this journey, click here.