Stu-vivor finals: OrangeSodaMan’s challenge completed

The final part of my response to OrangeSodaMan’s challenge is completed. I’ve appended it to my main entry at VSRealms; now I can get to work on the fantasy cards for my end of the challenge!

The final part is below the split for those who are following via the blog.

Quote:

ROUND FOUR REVAMP The challenge: Build a story deck, using cards in the narration - The original entrant: TheDerangedBear - The original theme: A personal story from real life, told in small cardboard rectangles

Lives are often filled with stories and adventures, even if they are just tales of glorious mediocrity… but when it comes to my own life, there’s one story that comes to mind as being possibly the most significant, the most impactful. It doesn’t hurt that it’s tied intrinsically to the most important woman in my life.

It begins back in the sunburnt country, Australia. While I lived in rural New South Wales, it certainly wasn’t in an Outback Stronghold. I was studying at university when I first met the future Gdaysheila, visiting Australia for the first time. Needless to say she was swayed by my roguish swagger, debonair good looks, and sexy accent. It certainly wasn’t a chilly reception.

We spent a year together. It was the happiest year I had yet experienced in my life. All good things, however, must eventually come to an end. Her visa expired, and she had to return to Canada.

Yes, we separated as the world came between us, our homes above and below the equator.

We were then apart for about 14 or 15 months before I contracted Meningococcal Meningitis. For those not familiar with it, it’s a rather infectious plague that doesn’t screw around. It kills. Those it doesn’t kill, it often leaves disfigured, as amputation isn’t as uncommon as we’d like to think in the course of treatment. It can. And of course, you have to get through a coma while you’re at it.

I have no idea how I contracted meningitis; I have no memory whatsoever of the two weeks prior the coma, in fact. I’m told that the doctors were telling my housemates to say goodbye, that I had very little chance at all of surviving the night. Against all odds, I didn’t pass on just yet, and was ferried to Sydney where the hospitals were better equipped to, well, keep me alive.

All I know is that I awoke from the coma in an Intensive Care Unit in Sydney to find my (arch)angel had been able to call in a favour, nabbed a plane ticket, flown back around the world again to be with me and try to help me through this.

Members of my family were present as well, including my Mum who clucked around like a mother hen, concerned for the health of her unstable son. This had a bizarre benefit though. While I was in the ICU, there was an outbreak of MRSA pneumonia. I was being fed by a tube, my nutritional needs were being met, but my mouth was so damn dry… so my dear darling mother stepped up as ice queen and put some in my mouth (I couldn’t move my arms at all at the time). I caught the pneumonia, and we’re pretty sure it came from that one event.

… but when it came time for me to move into the wards, I couldn’t be put into a shared room because of the pneumonia. Despite my not having any medical insurance, I spent the next six weeks in a private room, baby…
Six weeks of recuperating, rebuilding my muscles. Anyone who thinks they’re all brains and brawn, spend six weeks flat on your back and see how much of that brawn’s left…

Over that time Gdaysheila and I formally got engaged, and I learnt possibly the most significant lesson I’ve ever learned in my life.

You never know how much you’re loved until you die.

See, I did die. Back there in the ICU, my breathing tube became clogged at one point and I flatlined. Thankfully, the head of the hospital’s ICUs, quite the quick thinker, just happened to be in my ward at the time (there are, I believe, 5 ICU wards at the hospital in question) and I was revived by this lifegiver.

Throughout the rest of the six week stay, though, I received an amazing outpouring of concern, well-wishes and love from sources I never would have expected. Old co-workers drove six hours to spend half an hour with me. A church youth worker I hadn’t spoken to in over ten years – over a decade, for cryin’ out loud – called the hospital at least three times a week to check in on me. He never asked to speak to me, he just wanted to know how I was doing. The store where I was working, the owners collected over 150 messages in one giant card from regular customers and clients. I was awestruck.

You never know how much you’re loved, how much people care, how many lives you’ve impacted.

This is why I have difficulty coming to terms with emo kids and people who mope around proclaiming their loneliness and friendless status. I don’t mean to dismiss their feelings, but I have no doubt in my mind that these people have touched many lives in their past, have more people who think of them and wish them well than they could ever realize.

I was blessed to be given a glimpse, and it’s a lesson I’ll never forget.
Back to the narrative, Gdaysheila was able to stay in Australia for three months this time around, and we did our best to enjoy them despite my visits every couple of days from a home nurse (Carol… an angel of mercy, even if every visit was really quite painful) to remove necrotic tissue that had come from the black gangrene that usually accompanies Meningococcal Meningitis, to allow my second skin to grow.

The day she drove back to the airport, November 1999, was a sad day indeed. I remember my housemate awoke five hours before his normal noon wakeup (as required by his lifestyle as a devil-may-care rogue), to keep me company. It helped. I can be a bit of a blow hard sometimes, but that bravado can only cover up so much.

Three months later, I was on a plane. Leaving everything I knew, everyone I’d every known, every memory, even a pet dingo. Immigrating to Canada.

In June 2000, we were married, and I’m now a permanent resident of the Great White North. We own a home, two cars, we’ve even been to the local birthing chamber twice – Gdaygirl and Gdayboy continue to delight us daily, though at this stage only Gdaygirl’s allowed to touch my VS cards… and even then only under strict supervision.

I miss Australia. I miss the people, the animals, the culture, the meat pies. Oh Lord, do I miss the meat pies…

… but I wouldn’t give up what I have now for the world.

Stu-vivor Round Four Revamp: Gday’s Story

• 3x Beast: Quick Thinker
• 4x Havok: Unstable Son
• 3x Plague: Deathwalker
• 4x Healer: Lifegiver
• 3x Analee: Mother Hen
• 4x Emma Frost: Ice Queen
• 3x Archangel: Aeroballistic
• 4x Psylocke: Second Skin
• 2x Blow Hard: Windbag
• 2x Rogue: Anna Marie
• 4x Angel of Mercy
• 4x Awestruck
• 4x Against All Odds
• 4x Above and Below
• 4x Call In A Favor
• 4x Chilly Reception
• 4x Birthing Chamber