let it change you

32 Days In A Hospital

It’s funny how tapped in we can be to our future needs sometimes. The first “Intention Of The Week” newsletter I sent was the day before my partner Taj was admitted to the hospital. It was a cozy Sunday morning and I sat at the computer while she slept on the couch cuddled up with the cats.

We were both waiting for Monday morning — after a month of mystery rashes, fevers, joint pain and decreased appetite we were waiting for the flu and Covid tests to come back to rule a few more things out. The Urgent Care doctors thought it was impetigo, another family medicine doctor suspected it could be a rare reaction to an animal bite and kept asking Taj if she had been bit by a rabbit….? Everyone was stumped, and so were we.

This is Taj and I’s seventh year together and I have learned the art of caring for her when she is sick but this was different, and it felt like everything was getting progressively worse. I latched onto my Dear Self With Love Planner and looked to the week ahead pages and decided on “Zoom Out” for the intention of the week. I was inspired by a powerful metaphor from Glennon Doyle’s podcast and wrote,

“And for now, I can zoom out enough to recognize that I have never lived through anything where eventually the bigger picture hasn’t unlocked. Today, this week, I will live inside of the pixels that will later become the big beautiful reveal.”

That night Taj’s fever reached a new high and she developed a blotchy red rash down the front of her body. After we finally got a couple of hours of sleep we woke up to MyChart messages with negative Flu and Covid results. We sent pictures of the new rash to her doctor with a log of fevers through the weekend. The doctor responded, “Go to the ER now.”

We both took showers, scrambled around, put extra food in the cat bowls and packed a bag thinking maybe that Taj would be admitted overnight for a day or two. Taj was admitted that day, January 22nd and remained in the hospital until February 22nd.

32 days to be exact.

After extensive testing, lab draws, scans, kidney ultrasounds, biopsies and evaluations Taj was diagnosed with Lupus Nephritis, acute renal failure and atypical HUS. The reason the hospital stay was so long was because of the aHUS which is a very rare blood disease. Taj’s blood labs were so low that she needed five different blood transfusions and access to one of the world’s most expensive drugs, Ecluzimab, to help her red blood cells stop from breaking down.

We were told from day one that a kidney biopsy would need to be done in order to create the full treatment plan, but Taj’s platelets were too low to perform the procedure. So each day became about the possibility of new lab numbers. The mantra became “Rise platelets rise!” And when I walked into a Target on Valentine’s Day it felt like Alicia Key’s Underdog was playing for Taj’s platelets too.

That first week in the hospital I held onto Zoom Out with all my might. Knowing that all I had to do was live inside of the pixels. Each pixel being a moment inside of the new alternate reality we had slipped into. Staying present and not thinking about the big picture or the long term is how I anchored myself that first week. Being inside of the pixels is how I focused on what I could do — love Taj.

Zoom Out carried me through the first week and inspired the Sunday hospital ritual of sifting through my intention for the week ahead. I began texting a couple of friends so we could collectively hold each other’s intentions.

This first week back home feels like a new life. Like we have yet again entered into another new dimension. I could feel it in the hospital, how we were literally jumping timelines. I could feel our lives and futures changing. And as someone who has been deeply uncomfortable with change in the past, the flexibility and ease I am feeling in letting this entire experience change me is something I am leaning into.

It is changing our love. It is changing our daily schedule. It is changing the way that I need to take care of my body and immune system. It is changing the way I show up for myself. It is changing the way I ask others to show up for me. It is changing my art. It is changing my entire person. And I’m letting it. I’m grateful for it. I’m humbled by the experience of the veil being thin in that hospital room. I’m grounded in the truth that life is precious.

I can feel myself becoming new. This is another chapter. And what’s wild is that so many people expect me to be a mess, expect me to be grieving Taj’s new diagnoses but all I feel is this new lease on life. All I feel is love.

I told a friend who asked me how I was doing in the hospital, “I feel like I’ve crawled inside of love and now I live there.” We giggled, and she said “that is such a Cancer thing to say” while putting her hand on her heart and nodding. But it’s true. That is where I live now. That experience changed me. Being inside of love changed me.

And I’m going to let it.

With Love,

Jenna

P.S. I would be so grateful if you share your intention of the week with me in the comments below! I’d love to cheer you on and hear about what energies are carrying you throug htis week <3

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• I will forever be processing the incredible support we have received from our community. The Meal Train that our friend Rosa put together for us. The GoFundMe that my cousin Ariel started to support Taj’s recovery fund while she’s home from work for the foreseeable future. The Valentine’s Day baskets. The art made. The songs sent. The Kiefer runs. The coffee drop offs. The chocolate bars. The cat sitting and then the cat fostering. The question, “what do you need now on the other side?” My heart has been cracked open and turned into confetti so many times ❤️🌈 The word grateful doesn’t even do what this feels like justice!

• The feeling of brewing my own coffee at home after a month of going downstairs to the cafeteria for coffee every morning!

• This Spring air we’ve been having and how good it feels to breathe outside!

• The sweet intimate group that gathered together on Saturday Morning for February’s Monthly Forecast Circle and all the synchronicities of the group!

• The new low sodium crunchy chicken tender recipe that I’ve been mastering!

• Juicing green juice again at home on the daily after years of thinking it was too much work!

• The ability to run diffusers again! Go to has been rosemary this week :)