9 -- Gasp of Summer / NAP

July 1 - 15, 2018

July arrived, gasping for breath.

 Actually, that was ME, gasping for breath. 

As the next couple of weeks passed, I got weaker and weaker.  Breathing became increasingly difficult.  I couldn’t walk from the bedroom to the den without having to stop halfway and sit down to catch my breath.  Just a few months ago, I was walking 3 miles a day.  How can this all be happening? I felt like I had aged from 61 to 90 in 2 months‘  time. 

Eating and swallowing became a problem because I choked easily.  My diaphragm muscles were too weak to cough.  Often David would have to pound my back so I could overcome a choking episode.  Oddly, I discovered that when he’d hit my back, it actually relieved some of the discomfort in my lungs as well.  We joked that it was odd foreplay.  Dark humor, not really funny.

Talking also became difficult.  Not only because I couldn’t breathe, but because my words were so slurred and slow.  David and I would sit in the same room and text each other to have conversations.

I gulped for air, gasping loudly. I could not complete a sentence, I couldn’t get enough air to speak.  It was agonizing.  It was terrifying. 

I could not rest.  My bed –which has always been so comfortable to me – became a torture chamber.  I tried a mountain of pillows to prop on.  I could not lie flat, I couldn’t sit up.  I had a rocking chair beside my bed, and I’d move from one to the other all night long.  I was unable to sleep.  Sometimes if I bent way forward and stretched my arms out in front of me, I could almost catch a breath.   

A few times, David asked if I thought we should go back to the hospital.  My usual response was, what good would that do, since the shortness of breath seemed to be of little importance the first trip?

All the while, I was hoping to resume some normal life.  I know now I was fooling myself but I guess hope springs eternal. We had tickets to a play one night – we gave them away to friends. 

We were invited to a wedding that I’d looked forward to attending for months.  I was DETERMINED to go.  It was an outdoor ceremony, held down a hill.  I managed to attend the wedding, but watched from the upper deck of the house.  While I may have been able to walk down the hill to the clearing where the service was held, I would not have had the strength and lung capacity to make it back up. I was thrilled to be able to witness the marriage of my friends; it’s a bright spot in an otherwise tough summer.  We left right after the service, I was too exhausted to stay for the reception.  David gave me a “rain check” on a special dance.   

The following day we were supposed to go to the beach.  But I spent a sleepless night sitting on the edge of the bed respirating myself with the squeeze-respirator David ordered a few weeks ago.  David called 911 Sunday morning.

 So there I was on an ambulance again, gasping for air, heading back to the hospital.  David told the paramedic that I had Myasthenia Gravis and as we rode toward Columbia, the young man was on his phone, reading and learning about MG in between checking my vitals and reassuring me that I would be all right.  

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Untethered Time Travel:  NAP

I am 5 years old, it is 1961.  Today I have an important job:  helping my daddy in the chicken house.   We are getting new baby chickens.  
I put on my red galoshes because you wear boots in the chicken house.  
We ride the old blue GMC pickup truck down to the farm.  I hold Daddy’s hand and he helps me step through the door. 

I breathe deeply.  

The chicken house smells good because there are fresh cut wood shavings spread like a thick carpet throughout the whole house.  
The brooders look like silver flying saucers, all in a row as far as you can see. The house is warm because baby chickens have to have a warm place to live.

Daddy and I will put out chicken feed for the babies.  They will be hungry when they arrive!  He fills a wheelbarrow full of chicken feed 
and we walk to the far end of the house.  
Around each brooder there are 6 or 7 flat cardboard trays.  Daddy shoves a big silver scoop deep into the wheelbarrow to fill it with feed and then he dumps it out on one of the trays. 

I have a scoop too but mine is special.  Daddy made it just for me out of an oil can, a bolt, and some black tape.  It is smaller, so I have to put three scoops in a tray.  I count them… One…Two… Three… as I dump the feed out for the babies.  Together we put out the feed in all the trays. 

 

 It would be quiet work except I am chattering all the time.  

I like to talk!

Beep Beep!  It’s the Biddie Bus, right outside.  It looks like a little white school bus, but inside there are cardboard boxes full of tiny chickens.  
Two men start bringing the boxes inside the chicken house.  They stack a tower of boxes beside each brooder.  Now the house is getting louder, all of the biddies are chirping.  Daddy says they are saying “Let me out!  Let me out!”

Daddy tells me to work at one brooder.  I am supposed to take the biddies out of the boxes and set them under the warm brooder.  I watch my Daddy to see how he does it.  He removes the lid, picks up the box and dumps all the chicks out onto the shavings!  The little yellow fluff balls roll and tumble around and find a way to stand up.  He works quickly.  

I decide to do it my way.  I take the lid off of the box and carefully reach inside to pick up two or three chicks.  They are warm and soft and cuddly.  I gently set them on their feet under the brooder.  Oh, this one looks hungry, he needs to be near the feed tray.  I think I will name this one, she can be Hortense.  
Carefully I place all the chickens under the brooder. I don’t want them to be hurt.

Daddy finishes unloading all of the chickens in the whole house before I finish with my one brooder.  But that is ok.  I am still an important helper. 

All of this work has made me tired.  

It is warm underneath the brooder. 

The shavings are soft and smell nice.  

I think I will take a nap….