What happens when you weren’t supposed to survive but you did?

My whole life has been constant themes of trauma and grief and it may have finally taken a final toll. I grew up in a very tumultuous and difficult environment, not necessarily for any specific reason other than really shit luck? I don’t like thinking about why.
This is quite a complicated life story but I feel like it helps for some context on what I am struggling with currently.

In short summary, I was paralyzed in a “car accident” when I was 3 (my dad drove over me) and I have been in a wheelchair since. 6 months after this initial accident my dad had been electrocuted to death. These are my most early life memories, earliest of my dad; being in a morgue looking at him after I’ve been freshly paralysed. Things seem like they can’t get worse but they do. I struggle with medical and health complications and medical negligence majority of my adolescence spending more time in hospitals than anything else. More than school, more than home. So I grow up pretty secluded and unsocialised which furthers a feeling of ostracisation and loneliness. With all the medical things going on all I want is to go to school and be a normal kid, I basically live in a hospital bed and self study from there until I finish school/ and high school on my own. I still feel stuck and like I’m not really living a life worthwhile and so I become increasingly depressed and unmotivated to carry on, during this time my younger brother is diagnosed with leukaemia and I am readmitted into hospital (nearly dying several times due to mismanagement by my doctors).

These doctors have been working with me for 10years at this point and I feel like a science project doomed for a really shit end. At this point I am 17 and still under my mom’s parental supervision. My mom does not consider my opinions or life when it comes to medical stuff and basically gives my doctors free rein (which they gladly abuse). They fuck up and decide to amputate my whole lower body. I lose my mind, basically insist on dying instead of letting them do that for no reason. ( they were trying to cover up what they had done and an amputation would effectively erase 5 years of heavy medical negligence). We didn’t know this. My mom trusted my doctor. I didn’t. We fought about it for weeks as I refused to let it happen. And then my doctor starts getting investigated by my medical aid and he tells my mom he will deny everything he has ever told us. Fast forward, because of this investigation we leave town and het other professional opinions and it actually saves my life for the umpteenth time, the doctors involved retire.

At this stage I’m 19 and out of hospital for the first time “for good” in years. And I’m actually healthy! I start working on my life. I go to therapy, I get a job. Things are really looking up, but it’s still really difficult and hard to deal with as I don’t really have much support from my family. In the course of 7 years things progressively normalise a little and I start feeling like a person. At this point I am studying at uni and working at the same time, while supporting myself and trying to find myself and make friends and everything I missed out on when I was young. I secretly apply for a university 6 hours away and get in, and move against everyone’s advice. Everyone was pissed off that I had done this. So pissed off I had manage and pack most of my move on my own. Anyway, best decision ever honestly. But then at the end of my degree as I (26 now) was supposed to be graduating I got really really sick. I had no idea what was going on but at this point it had been 7 years since I had been severely ill or even in hospital so I didn’t really take feeling unwell seriously. I was writing exams and I was pretty focused on finishing up my degree and graduating, I thought I’d focus on my health after my last test. Woke up a few days later unable to move, couldn’t get up and so I phoned my mom. I told her something was wrong but that I couldn’t figure out what was going on and she asked me if I wanted to come home. I declined because it took a lot to get out in the first place. But when I got worse I phoned my brother to come get me. A day later I was in a coma.

I wake up 2 weeks later, one of my legs had been amputated, I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move and had no idea what had happened. Turns out those previous surgeries and negligent procedures had been brewing a life threatening abscess on the bone of my femurs that had been poisoning me for the last 7 years? I couldn’t feel it because I am paralysed. This was obviously a massive shock, I had gone to sleep the healthiest I’ve ever been and woken up with body parts missing unable to move, gone from my home and my friends.
During the 2 weeks that I had been in the coma my body had shut down and it was pretty certain that I wouldn’t survive. My organs failed. I was too weak for them to operate on, and so that was it.
They had called my family and told them to come say their goodbyes, called my friends. Packed up all my stuff, moved me out of my apartment. All my stuff, my whole life gone.

Miraculously, I started responding to whatever meds they had been giving me, this is the day after I was supposed to die. My organs started functioning again, and then I started being woken up from my coma. I know my chance of survival for less than 10% and so logically it would make sense that my family come to terms with my death, but my brother had told be about the conversations that were being had about the value of my life while I was in a coma, and my mom was motivated to put off the machines for my life insurance. Finding all this out after the fact stings nonetheless.

So, this is where I am at now! Turned 27 a week ago, been in psychical rehab and therapy, but I feel defeated. I am grateful to still be alive but I don’t feel like I have much of anything left to give or that anyone really wants me around. Everyone had already said goodbye to me…My doctors had convinced my family that I had nothing to live for and that death was inevitable. It feels like there is no escape from suffering. No matter how hard I believe in myself. Dealing with trauma burn out? I just want to feel good enough to try again.