Life Was Perfect—Until It Wasn’t

Everything was going so well. I was preparing for my first big solo show in five years, and every ounce of my energy was pouring into it. It felt like I was finally iin a rhythm, completely consumed by the process—immersed in the concept, excited by how the works were taking shape. The anticipation was real. I was exercising two to three times a week, eating healthy, and feeling content with my wife as we planned a trip to the mountains.

I genuinely felt happy, like things had clicked into place.

But life has a way of throwing you off course when you least expect it. One day, everything just fell apart.
 

A Sudden Collapse

It all started just a couple of days after a workout. My muscles were sore, but I figured it was just the usual post-training discomfort. By that evening, though, I started to feel feverish. No big deal, right? I figured it was nothing more than a flu or maybe some stress from overworking. I took some paracetamol, brewed some tea, and kept hydrated, all while assuming it would pass. I had vitamins, warm blankets, and plans to take it easy. My wife was at work, and I was home alone, reassuring myself that I’d be back to normal soon.
But then the hiccups started—constant and annoying. I’d never had persistent hiccups like that before, and I started feeling uneasy. My fever wasn’t subsiding. By the next day, it became clear that something was wrong. My temperature climbed, and I couldn’t stop shivering. Despite my efforts to manage it at home, I felt like I was losing control of my own body. My wife was still at work, and I was left alone in our apartment, unaware that this was the beginning of something far more serious than I could have ever anticipated.

The Shock of Hospitalization

The fever kept rising. I remember standing in our bathroom, feeling delirious as I splashed cold water on my face, hoping to cool down. I was still hiccupping uncontrollably. Desperate for answers, I went to see a doctor. After a blood test, the doctor prescribed me antibiotics, assuming it was a bacterial infection. I followed her instructions, hoping for relief.
But instead of getting better, I got worse. That night, my temperature spiked to 39.2°C, and I began to shake uncontrollably. My body felt like it was shutting down. My wife and I both knew that this wasn’t normal, and that we had to act fast. We rushed to the hospital.

The Beginning of the Nightmare

We arrived at the hospital around midnight, and I was completely out of it. The waiting room was crowded, and the minutes dragged on. After an hour and a half, a doctor finally saw me. They ran tests, drew blood, and then the news hit us like a truck: I had pneumonia in both lungs. Not just any pneumonia—H1N1viral pneumonia. The doctor explained that the antibiotics I had been taking had likely made things worse, allowing the virus to attack my lungs with even more intensity.
At around 5 a.m., they decided to transfer me to another hospital by ambulance for immediate treatment. I’ll never forget the feeling of being wheeled through those cold hospital corridors in the early morning hours. My wife wasn’t allowed to come with me, and that’s when the fear really set in. I had no idea what was happening to my body, and I didn’t know if I was going to make it.
I clung to the little comforts that I could find. When I was finally settled into a hospital room, I remember taking a weird sort of solace in the fact that the room had a large window and that the bed looked clean and new. I thought, maybe this won’t be so bad. But that illusion of comfort shattered quickly when, just a few hours later, they transferred me to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

ICU: A Living Hell

The ICU was nothing like the hospital room I had briefly occupied. It was a nightmare come to life. The space was arranged in a half-circle with ten beds all facing a central station where doctors and nurses monitored patients.. It was cold, clinical, and terrifying. Every patient was hooked up to machines that emitted constant, arrhythmic beeping sounds. I was the youngest person there. The air was thick with the feeling of sickness, as if the walls themselves were pulsing with the agony of those around me.
As soon as I was wheeled in, they took away my personal belongings—my phone, clothes, everything. I was left with nothing but the sterile hospital gown and the oppressive beeping of the machines that kept me tethered to life. I was hooked up to an oxygen mask, trying to breathe through the heaviness in my chest, and the loneliness started to sink in. I was bed #10. There was nothing to distract me from the fact that I was surrounded by people on the brink of death.
Every day felt like torture. Three times a day, they pumped large bags of antibiotics, vitamins, and who knows what else into my veins. Sometimes, the process was excruciating when air got into the IV line, sending sharp pain shooting through my body. X-rays were a daily routine, along with endless blood tests. The worst were the arterial blood draws, where they would stab deep into my wrist to check my oxygen levels in my blood. I can still feel the ache of it now (and marks left there for quite some time)

Time Slips Away

The ICU never slept, and soon, neither did I. The room was always brightly lit, the beeping never stopped, and I couldn’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. My mind began to unravel. Time lost all meaning. I remember lying there, trying to close my eyes, but even the faintest sound would jolt me awake. My senses became hypersensitive—the lights were blinding, the noise was deafening, and my thoughts were racing.
On the third day without sleep, paranoia crept in. I began to believe the nurses were hiding things from me. They refused to dim the lights, saying it was hospital policy to keep them on all night for monitoring purposes. But in my exhausted state, I was convinced it was a form of punishment. I felt like I was being watched, tested, and left in the dark—both literally and figuratively—about my condition. (Painting: bed#10)
At one point, I remember seeing black bags being wheeled out of the ICU, presumably filled with the bodies of patients who hadn’t survived. I was haunted by the thought that I could be next, that it was only a matter of time before I ended up in one of those bags. My brain couldn’t handle it anymore. I started imagining things, convinced that my time was running out.

Breaking Point

By the fourth or fifth day, I was barely holding on. Sleep deprivation had pushed me to the edge. I saw doctors and medical students huddled around my x-rays and test results, their faces grim. Each time they examined me, I could see their concern, and it only deepened my paranoia. I felt like they knew something I didn’t—that they were withholding information, waiting for the right moment to break the news that I wasn’t going to make it.
In a moment of absolute desperation, I decided to write a farewell letter to my wife. I had a small book with me, and in it, I scrawled a message, convinced that I wouldn’t survive the night. The exhaustion, fear, and hopelessness were crushing me. I wrote about how much I loved her and how sorry I was that I wouldn’t be
there for her anymore It felt like the end. (Painting: Farewell, My Darling.)
But then, something unexpected happened. The doctors informed me that my wife would be allowed to visit me the next day. At the time, I was 100% convinced that they had read my farewell letter during the night and realized how desperate I had become. It seemed like the only explanation for why they’d allow her in after days of keeping her away.
When she finally walked into the ICU, it felt like seeing an angel. Her smile brought the light, even though I was terrified of how I must have looked—pale, thin, hooked up to machines with an oxygen mask strapped to my face. But she didn’t flinch. She brought me clothes, food, and a blindfold to help me sleep. From then on, she sent daily letters and care packages. Her letters were my lifeline, my one connection to the outside world, to reality. In a place where time didn’t exist, her words anchored me.

The Isolation of Insomnia

Despite the brief relief of seeing my wife, sleep still eluded me. Seven days in the ICU and not a single night of rest. I couldn’t take it anymore. I kept telling the doctors that I needed sleep to recover, and they agreed, but none of the sedatives they gave me worked. I was stuck in a constant state of anxiety and exhaustion.
The blindfold didn’t help block out the lights, and I even tried stuffing paper into my ears to drown out the noise, but nothing worked.
By the eighth day, I was completely broken. My legs had withered away, and I had lost about 10 kilograms. I hadn’t seen my own reflection since arriving at the hospital, but I knew something was wrong with my body. One day, I rubbed my eyeslids and saw a purple smudge on my hands. Soon after, my fingers started to
turn purple, and I became convinced that my face must have been changing color too—probably yellow or purple. I felt like I was decaying.
When the doctors made their rounds, I begged them to tell me the truth. I asked them point-blank: “Am I going to make it? Am I dying?” They reassured me that my lungs were healing, that I would be okay. But it felt like a lie. I was sure they were just waiting for me to die so they could free up my bed for the next patient.

Discharge: A Broken Man

After what felt like a lifetime, the day of my discharge finally arrived. My wife came to pick me up, and I’ll never forget how weak I felt. I could barely stand, let alone walk. My legs trembled as I tried to leave the ICU, and my wife had to carry my bag for me. The ride home was overwhelming. The city streets were too loud, too fast.
Everything felt like too much. I had been isolated for so long that even the most mundane sounds—traffic, people talking, the honking of car horns—were enough to make me panic.
When we arrived home, our dog avoided me. It crushed me. This was the dog who was always by my side, always following me around the house. But now, he treated me like a stranger. I knew I looked different, smelled different—like hospitals and sickness. But still, it hurt. I felt like a ghost in my own home.
That first night at home was awful. I couldn’t sleep lying down because it triggered fits of coughing, so I propped myself up on pillows. Even then, sleep came in short bursts, and I was constantly jolted awake by panic attacks. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the ICU, fighting for air. The nightmares were relentless, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was still on the verge of death. (painting Batshit Crazy)

Escape to the Countryside

The next morning, we made the decision to leave the city and head to the countryside. My family thought that being surrounded by nature would help me heal, and I agreed. I couldn’t take the noise of the city anymore—it was too overstimulating, too reminiscent of the chaos of the ICU. But when we arrived at the countryside, I felt like a shell of my former self. I could barely walk, and the once-familiar landscape felt foreign. Even the dogs avoided me, adding to the sense that I was some kind of stranger, even to the animals.
At one point, I made a joke, calling myself a “dead man walking,” but deep down, I felt like that was the truth. I wasn’t the person I used to be. I didn’t even recognize myself. My body was fragile, my mind broken, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever recover. (Painting: Dead man walking.)

The Path to Healing

My family knew that I wasn’t just physically recovering—I was mentally shattered. They encouraged me to see a psychiatrist. At first, I resisted. I thought I was just tired, that I needed rest and time to get back to normal. But eventually, I agreed. On the way to the appointment, I was terrified. My mind was filled with images of hospital beds, funeral cars, cemeteries, and institutions. I was convinced that they were taking me somewhere to be locked up, that I was losing my mind.
But when I met with the psychiatrist, everything started to make sense. She diagnosed me with PTSD and gave me medication to help manage my anxiety and insomnia. It wasn’t an instant fix, but it was a step in the right direction. She explained that everything I had experienced— the sleep deprivation, the isolation, the paranoia—was a normal reaction to trauma. Knowing that helped, at least a little.
The next few weeks were slow. I spent most of my time sitting outside, watching the world go by, hearing horses galloping outside, feeling disconnected from it all. I couldn’t paint, I couldn’t work. All I could do was breathe and exist.Being just a shadow of myself as my wife told me. (Painting: Madman’s Throne)
 

Slowly, things began to change. I started sleeping a little better each night, and my strength returned, bit by bit. I began walking through the garden, I practiced diaphragmatic breathing exercises throughout the day, desperate to rebuild my lung capacity, still haunted by the fear of suffocation. It was hard, and it took everything I had just to take a few steps, but I was determined to recover. (Painting: Diaphragmatic breathing.)
Eventually, my family convinced me to go to New York for an NFT exhibition. They thought it would help me reconnect with the world and give me a sense of purpose again. I was hesitant at first—I still felt weak, physically and mentally. But something in me knew that this was my chance to start rebuilding.
 

My family noticed the changes before I did—they said my humor was returning, that I was slowly becoming myself again. They were talking and said that they need to send me to NYC for NFT exhibition and knew that this experience there will help with getting my confidence and personality back.
 

Despite the progress, the mental scars were still raw. The thought of an upcoming trip to NYC was both exhilarating and terrifying. I was still weak, constantly questioning myself, a shadow of who I had been. But I knew I needed that challenge, to prove to myself that I could reclaim my life from the grip of fear. In the end, I made it to New York, and the experience was transformative. It allowed me to start letting go of the paranoia and dread that had held me captive for so long. (Painting: Resilience)

lung-head man aka Primitive_RE

Belgrade, 10.09.2024