The First Meal I Ate After I Died

Trigger warning: Medically detailed information and spiritual/demonic descriptions.

Tasting emotions rarely happens to anyone, but I am honored that it happened to me. Until this whole shebang happened, I had only tasted one other meal that was insanely delicious: the pizza Justin and I ordered on our wedding night. I was 19, he was 21, and we are high school sweethearts. We had a magical, fairy tale themed wedding, danced to I’ll Be by Edwin McCain as our first dance, and he was my first partner ever. That pizza was incredible. Despite the fairy tale theme, I’m a tomboy. I’m missing the girlie gene that wants all the makeup, hairdos, and high fashion. (Except purses. I’m a purse slut for Dooney & Burke!) All of my life, I’ve been a tomboy that loves to play sports. Getting dirty and injured is just a part of life for me.

My nickname in high school was Crash or Hop-along for the insane amount of times I rolled my ankle and had to use crutches. While scrimmaging (not a game, no; just a scrimmage) the varsity boys’ basketball team, obviously, a 5’3” sophomore girl can block the layup of 6’1” senior boys on a fast break. (I was actively working the Air Alert II program and was absolutely certain I would be able to dunk a basketball before I graduated high school. Dream insanely big is my life motto!) I was wearing an ankle brace at the time and remember seeing the bottom of my foot with my ankle straight. Something had to give: my knee. The total damage was to tear my entire ACL, half my MCL, and my meniscus in my left knee, which required ACL reconstruction and staples in my knee. (I’m always the one with the big injury in some of the worst ways.)

Years later, I made a similar, prideful, dream-like mistake. My 33-year-old body tried to juke a high school boy in a volunteer-appreciation basketball game and I tore my ACL. After ACL reconstruction, I was on baby aspirin for 14 days and in a knee immobilizer for an as yet undetermined timeframe. 18 days after surgery and 4 days after I stopped taking the baby aspirin, I collapsed while walking into my daughters’ flag football games. The EMTs drove me to the hospital as they got an EKG. I heard them say, “She has ST elevation in V1”, and I immediately thought I’m not having an MI! I’m having a PE! Don’t treat the wrong thing! But I couldn’t say that. I could only answer things like, “What’s your name? DOB?” during the drive. I blacked out shortly after starting the drive to the hospital but was still talking. Then, as they wheeled me into the ED room, they couldn’t find my pulse.

I coded for 2 minutes, and woke up during compressions, convinced their oxygen was disconnected. During my nursing career, I assisted with a code blue where the oxygen wasn’t connected to the mask. But I just screamed “I CAN’T BREATHE!” before passing out and coding again. This happened a few more times for a total of 44 minutes. The CTA (CT with angiogram injection) showed an entirely occlusive saddle pulmonary embolism. Shannon, the ED pharmacist, insisted that they give a bolus dose of tPA to me. I still had my knee immobilizer on my right leg, so a blood clot was the most likely cause. (The formal results of the CTA didn’t come back until after I was fully resuscitated.) Shannon told both Dr. Lassiter and Dr. McIlvain that I would be dead if they didn’t do something different, but I might not be dead if they tried the tPA bolus. It was off-label, but I was already dead, so the worst had already happened. At minute 39 of the code, they pushed the tPA dose. I woke up 5 minutes later as a pain in the ass.

You see, I’d been an ICU nurse for 9 years at that point. I immediately started writing notes asking, “What’s my levophed rate?” “Did I have a saddle PE?” Then someone came in and said, “I have the ABG results!” (ABG is arterial blood gas. It helps the healthcare team evaluate how oxygen and carbon dioxide are impacting acids and bases in your body.) I wrote “pH?” and I heard them say, “<7.0.”

That was when I realized I was in deeeeeeeep shit. I laid down and stopped fighting so much. (Apparently, I broke a set of wrist restraints in between the code blues. I was so wild that the nurse that broke my sternum, Christy, nicknamed me Barracuda!)

I remember waving at Dr. Wilson who did my ACL repair. I remember signing “Thank you” to Dr. Lasseter from the ED and Dr. McIlvain from the hospitalist team. As we wheeled up to ICU, I blacked out but didn’t code again.

I had been in the hospital since Saturday, in ICU for 2 nights, the first night intubated on a ventilator and sedated, and the second night to keep a close eye on me from finding a new clot in my calf less than 24 hours after tPA administration.

After transferring out of the ICU to a regular floor and getting an inferior vena cava (IVC) filter placed from continued bleeding, 2 people visited me; Dr. Lasseter from the ED and one of the nurses from the ED, Josh, visited me that same day in my hospital room. They said I was constantly on a razor-sharp edge of a precipice, that small changes would make me code again. I stopped them and asked, “Code AGAIN??” They both got a confused look on their face and said, “Yes. 44 minutes total!”

Until that moment, I still hadn’t realized I coded. My brain knew, but I couldn’t vocalize or bring it to the surface. I was just in shock at that. In my 9 years of ICU care, I had NEVER seen a patient code for that long without major deficits OR survive a pH <7.0 unless they were long-time diabetics in diabetic ketoacidosis. I shouldn’t be alive.

Later that day, I continued to try drinking water and broth. I tried eating Jello and pudding and crackers. But I would taste…. nothing. I barely registered the texture. I didn’t have an appetite at all.

But when my husband, Justin, asked what food sounded good, because he would go anywhere to get anything I wanted, I instantly knew shredded chicken taco from Pancho’s. Because of course you have tacos on Tuesday.

He was gone for about 15 minutes and when he walked in the room with that bag of food, the smell of the warm corn taco shell holding delicious chicken with cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes was tantalizing.

Justin put the Styrofoam container on the bedside table over my hospital bed. (The Styrofoam screeches didn’t even bother me!) When I opened the lid, the delectable steam that rose to my nostrils was mouth-watering. I just sat there, enjoying the smells and how they blended perfectly together. Enjoying how I finally had the desire to eat food.

When I reached to pick up the taco, the warm, firmly crispy shell held true. The overflowing shredded cheese and lettuce spilled gracefully back into the container.

That first bite was ……mmmmmm heavenly!!! The perfect crispy crunch, the deliciously tender and seasoned chicken, the overabundance of cheese (my fave!), and the combination with the lettuce and tomato was explosively delightful! This was the first food that sounded good and was delicious to me.

As I ate that taco (and it fell apart!), I started remembering the visions from my day in the ED. I had told the EMTs, Tyller and Elizabeth, when they visited me in ICU, about a vision/dream I had during the code blues. I didn’t remember what I told them completely but, as we became friends later, they told me they had chills from what I had described. That first bite unlocked the vision I’d buried. (I’ve never been able to figure out why completely. But my best guess is dying is the antithesis of eating. My first desired meal after I died was the final moment of reclaiming my life.)

I open my eyes to a gray fog covering a barely lit canyon area. I smell smoke and sulfur and infection and feel the taint in the air on my skin.

In front of me are 8 10-foot-tall demons with 10-foot-long crooked swords standing between Justin and me. They had snouts showing crooked and missing teeth with horrible leers on their faces, glowing sulfur-green eyes, horns on their heads, matted fur with missing patches showing sores all over their bodies, and claws instead of hands and feet.

Justin stood just behind the demons, waving me forward, saying, “Come on, let’s go.” I was absolutely getting to Justin, so I started using my own sword to fight my way to Justin. I got fingertip to fingertip with Justin, only to have the demons start pushing me back and winning the fight.

I wasn’t scared; I WAS FURIOUSLY LIVID. The RAGE at those demons’ audacity was astronomical. The demons continued to fight me and push me back against the canyon wall. Just as the demons started swinging the final blow with their swords, I felt a golden warmth covering my back, and saw a flaming sword swing over my head, cutting the demons in half in one swipe.

As soon as the last demon was cut in half, I woke up in the ED.

My breath caught in my throat. My heart started to race. I looked at Justin and said, “I fought demons.”

Justin bought 3 tacos that day, but I only ate one, delicious taco. The taste of that taco was nearly indescribable: it tasted of life, of surviving battle, of fighting my way back from the dead to Justin, of favorite small pleasures.

Honestly, my brain probably wanted a taco because tacos fall apart all the time, and we don’t throw them away; we just hold them together, love them, and keep eating. Seems fitting.