This Shit is Real

December 6, 2025

I want to tell you that this shit is real.

I have a new home-health client. I had introductory meeting with her and her daughter on Thursday night, and even then, I had a prickle in my gut that something wasn’t right. When I went for my first full day on Saturday, her oxygen levels were critically low. Her cough had worsened. She’d have these long coughing spells and then no air at all for 5–10 seconds. She kept saying she didn’t want to go to the ER because it’s a horrible place.

We called her HMO’s nurse triage line, who agreed with my assessment. Her daughter came, we talked it all through, and she finally agreed to go. Then came the scramble—this was not a family with diagnosis codes, medication lists, and health histories ready to hand off. First responders arrived, and we were suddenly digging through drawers and boxes for pill bottles, trying to reconstruct medication allergies and offer long narrative answers instead of the simple, organized summaries that make these situations less chaotic.

Moments like that reminded me how much we learned the hard way—and how much stress good preparation can prevent.

By the time she left with EMS, I had two intense hours of medical case management under my belt. I’d already told the family on Thursday I had suggestions for improving her care and quality of life, but we agreed I wouldn’t jump in until there was more relationship building and the patient trusted me. As we wrapped up after EMS left, the daughter said she and her siblings looked forward to my suggestions.

Driving home, I was thinking about their needs, making a list of things that could help. That train of thought switched tracks as I passed the NC Arboretum on Hwy 191 and I thought about how I was getting off work at 1:30 instead of 4:00. “Hmm, do I have time to come back and take a quick hike at Bent Creek?” Reviewing my evening schedule, I was in front of the discount shoe store on Brevard Road when it hit. Out of nowhere. I started sobbing. Not crying—sobbing.

All morning, I had nary a thought about you or the countless times ambulances took you to the ER. I was in professional mode all morning. I had thought of you on both Thursday and Saturday as I walked up the stairs to the client’s apartment. I remember noticing how newer apartment buildings all have the same stairwells. It made me think of our apartment and how, during COVID when the YMCA was closed, I’d come home in the winter dark, and we’d spend at least thirty minutes walking up and down steps in different buildings so you could get some exercise on my work days. We would stop on landings and check out the different views, and at some point you would pretend that you were starting to fall because my panic always made you laugh. I smiled at that memory and tucked it away, making a mental note to write to you about how your slapstick falls drove me—and everyone caring for you—crazy.

Although I remember your frustrating antics, I was not aware of the wall I constructed around the EMS memories. Then the wall cracked, and everything came rushing through. Body memory. Muscle memory. Nervous system memory. The tears seemed to crash in from behind me and spill forward into my body.

I sobbed most of the way home.

I pulled into the driveway and called Laura. She answered like she always does: “Hey Mama, what’s up?”

“I called to confirm that this shit is real.”

I sat in the driveway talking to our girl—sharing and crying and laughing. My car became a refuge. There is something holy about being understood in the exact language of your suffering. Now 32, she was only 12 years old when I was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, and 15 when you were diagnosed with a brain tumor. She has her own genetic health issues. She knows what healthcare trauma feels like in her bones.

Other people don’t. They just don’t.

This shit is real.

“I didn’t know my body remembered everything that my mind wanted to forget.” — Nayyirah Waheed

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December 7, 2025 —

I want to tell you that I finally wrote about our days of hell at HCA Mission.

Since February 2024, every time I think about recording that experience, it feels like cracking open a door into a dark room, catching the barest glimpse, and then slamming the door shut before the darkness escapes. I knew I needed to write about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to open that door.

Until I accidentally forced myself to.

In October, I signed up to give a Toastmasters speech about ICE atrocities. But when I started drafting it, my emotions were so intense I knew I couldn’t deliver an effective five-to-seven-minute talk. I was housesitting for a month—settled in one place—so I told myself I’d use that time to write about January 23–25 instead. After ten weepy days, I knew that story wouldn’t fit into a speech either, so I pivoted to WNC agriculture and supporting local farmers.

Three weeks of continuous writing produced a light little talk—apparently that was the emotional bandwidth I could tolerate at that moment. But I’m glad I tricked myself into writing about HCA Mission. Even though I didn’t give that speech, writing about those days opened the door I had been slamming shut for 20 months.

And when that door opened, the demons flew out.

I wallowed my way through those days—reliving how you suffered needlessly—how they let you suffer needlessly. But opening that door also made space for connection and inspiration. In working on our story, I’ve connected with writers and advocates who share my passions and compassions. I’ve discovered a rich community of people from all walks of life who are embracing healing through the arts. After months of inactivity, I have actually wanted to write these past few weeks. There’s some sort of miracle and magic that comes with getting “unstuck.” Through Reclaim Healthcare WNC, I connected with a chaplain and a doctor who advocate fiercely while honoring trauma and promoting real healing. And speaking of Reclaim, every time I pull up their website, I see Dr. Messino’s picture and recall the two of you dancing and telling jokes over the years. I need to write an I want to tell you post to Dr. Messino.

Although facing those demons made room for angels, the demons have stuck around.

For 20 months, the memories lived in a black box somewhere far away, but now they are part of this world. Once I opened that door, the demons just show up uninvited. Every few days I’m pulled back into the neuro ICU at HCA Mission. Your eyes are full of pain and terror. You moan and lunge up off the bed, your hands reaching and grasping into thin air again and again and again, while my pleas and demands for meds for pain and agitation are ignored hour after hour after hour.

It isn’t exactly a memory. It’s a shift in dimensions.

This morning it happened as I reached into the closet for a jacket. One second, sunlight from the window streamed over my shoulder, illuminating the closet as I opened the door. The next, I heard talking and beeping and footsteps outside the curtain at the hospital room door. The nurse’s computer glowed on its stand at the end of the bed. I was frozen in my horror and my powerlessness to relieve the contortions in your pain-riddled face and body. Instantly I yanked myself back through the portal—physically discharging—”shake the tree…deep breaths…put body and spirit where your feet are.” Head bowed, I placed hand to heart and reconnected to the present moment. The demonic past was just a flicker as I reclaimed myself, but it shadowed me the rest of the day.

This shit is real.