An hour after the ventilator was turned off, I was speaking my first words in three weeks. But when the respiratory therapist checked my stats, they were troubling. Compared against clinical textbook measures, mine were twenty points lower than the minimum value deemed necessary for a person to breathe without mechanical intervention. I should’ve been in respiratory distress, struggling to communicate. And yet here I was. Breathing independently. Vocalizing my children’s names. If I had been at a hospital that followed medical texts rather than individual anomalies, I may at that point have been re-intubated; I may have forever been.
Melissa Williams is a writer and eternal student. She is currently working on a memoir about acquiring a rare and disabling illness, transverse myelitis. Find Melissa at melissajowilliams.wordpress.com and on Instagram @meljowilliams.