The process of letting people know about all this even now has been comment worthy. One of the single most stressful things about this entire ordeal has been informing my mother and father about this. There is no good way to spin: "A psychotic person tried to end my existence by stabbing me in the neck with a box cutter prompting me to spend 3 days in ICU at the hospital." especially when the dynamics include parents who were raised in another country/culture speaking a different language on top of a worrywart mother whose behavior in the past has trained me to expect that sharing one's burdens with one's mother only results in increasing the level of stress by a geometric factor. And it would have been even worse if she'd tried to hop on a plane and fly out to CA from Ohio. After asking just about anyone who came into my hospital room, including some housekeeping people who apparently didn't speak any English, the consensus was: "wait until the day you are discharged before you call your mother". However, a distant relative commented via social media (in this case Facebook) on my situation, I realized that I couldn't hold off any longer and risk someone else contacting my mother first, so Friday night, I called home. My dad answered. His English has never been so good, and so I got through "accident" & "hospital" before he asked me if I wanted to talk to my mother, who then took the phone. I chose to describe things as having had an accident, gotten hit in the neck and having had to go to the hospital but that I was going to be fine. I think I managed to reassure her by pointing out that it happened during a church related event and that the church was going to try and cover any and all medical expenses not covered by whatever insurance I had (which is a MAJOR BLESSING). Who's going to try and kill someone else at a church function, right? My long term plan is to travel to see my parents this summer and tell them the entire truth then face to face.

And then there's been the use of social media, in this case Facebook. Even now, there are people in my friends network who remain unaware of what's happened even though it's now been over a week and a half since the attack took place. I've had to examine my own feelings about some folks apparently just blathering on (even though I've long since categorized them as narcissists) in their wall posts & pics and just as in the attack, choose not to personalize apparent indifference.

Apparently the most effective way of getting the word through Facebook is to update your profile picture to a pic of you in a bed in ICU with tubes coming out of all different parts of one's body. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to ask someone to take a few pics for that very purpose! When  I figure out how to include them in this blog, I'll add them.