I wouldn’t be much of a writer if I let opportunities to write about death slip through my hands. So here we go.
A week ago Saturday I was a normal person. I made a deal with the SuperHusband that if he would knock out four kids’ science projects on a Saturday morning four days before the Science Fair, I’d keep him fed and clean the house. No problem. Fetched things, ran errands, produced the goods. I was tired by the middle of the afternoon — tired enough I kinda slacked off on my end of the deal, he having come through on his . . . but it was just tired.
Dragged myself to the church in the morning, because tired really is not an excuse, and it was fine. I could sing. I could stand around and chat. Normal person.
Sunday afternoon I pushed myself out the door and into the yard to say that Rosary.
Dear Legion of Mary,
I have missed very many rosaries this winter. Fortunately I came up with new, worse sins, so that I could rather gloss over my neglected prayer life in the confessional.
You’re welcome,
Jennifer.
I like to walk around while I pray, because I am very bad at praying. Sunday a week ago, that did not work out. Even walking very, very slowly, I couldn’t finish a Hail Mary without needing far too many deep breaths. Not only does this increase the amount of time you spend praying (silver lining there, I’m sure), but if you can’t walk and finish a phrase at the same time, you really are supposed to sit down.
I sat down.
Now this has happened before a few times, intermittently over very many months, but it has always passed. I didn’t worry about it very much.
Monday I was so incredibly tired. Too tired to be a decent housewife and homeschooling mom. You only get so many Exhausted Passes before you have to call the doctor, and I’d used all mine up. So I called.
Went in to the see the GP in the morning, and everything checked out AOK, other than the tired and the short of breath at the least exertion. We made follow-up plans. It really wasn’t that bad then. I decided to be serious about resting. I had this retreat coming up, but no problem: Married to a sound guy. He could mic me, I could sit while I talked, it would be fine. Fine.
I called in sick to everything, laid around all week. It would be fine.
Saturday, as I mentioned, shortly after I’d finished catching up on e-mails, it ceased to be fine. Went to the ER, where they spent the weekend determining I wasn’t having a heart attack. They don’t look for much else than that. Consider relaxation. Call your cardiologist if you’re really worried.
They did do a stress test Sunday AM in the holding tank at the ER, and I walked the thing. I knew I could walk it, because (a) I’d spent 20 hours lying around doing nothing so I was very rested up, (b) there was no way no how they were putting that nasty chemical in me that simulates exercise without actually exercising are you kidding? Just No., and (c) I used to race bikes. So I don’t care how hard it is, for ten minute I can do anything.
So I did that. It actually felt *great*, in surreal sort of way. Standing there on the treadmill, walking slowly, and breathing like I was running sprints. 2nd hardest run of my life, though I hadn’t done the first hardest yet. Felt awesome, because sprinting does feel awesome, even if you’re doing it slow motion. Heart did great, lungs sucked wind: Maybe you’ve got asthma, ma’am? Sir, this isn’t asthma.
Went home. They told me to come back to the ER anytime I liked, but of course they weren’t going to do anything new, they’d just rewalk the same territory.
Laid low Monday, and let me tell you: When I’m sitting still I feel perfectly normal. Normal. I completely, absolutely, forget that the body’s gone AWOL these last eight days. SuperHusband lined up the follow-up with the pulmonologist (see: “maybe you’ve got asthma?”) for this morning.
***
There’s a pulmonology circle of Hell, I’m sure of it.
So we go in, and I’m still feeling more or less like a normal person, since the SuperHusband has figured out how to keep me from walking or standing any more than absolutely necessary. Normal person. Albeit a tired one.
So they call you back to do these breathing test things. There’s this room, and a very nice lady with a computer, and this thing like a space-age telephone booth, with a bench in it.
The bench is the killer.
It’s a normal bench. Padded. Like something at an airport.
The really nice lady gives you instructions on the test thing you’re going to do. There will be deep breaths, and inhaling and exhaling and all this stuff. It reminds me of dance class, where the instructor would show us this elaborate thing I could never keep straight, but fortunately during the recital she always stood in the wings and you could look over and see what you were going to do.
The nice lady is like that. You put your mouth on the breathing thing, and she tells you everything to do, step by step.
Except it never, ever, ends.
About halfway through I lost it.
It wasn’t the breathing. It was the sitting up, on that bench, all. that. time.
I just couldn’t sit up anymore. Just no. It was too much of that infernal bench.
***
She was really nice. I cried for a bit, because: So exhausted.
I’ve raced very many bike races. I’ve reached that point in the race where your quad quits working, so you use your arm to push it down each time as you work up the hill. Not a problem. I’ve pushed a final sprint so hard I coughed for a week afterward. Not a problem. I’ve finished training rides so long and intense that I mumbled jibberish to the lady at the bagel shop after. Not a problem.
This sucked. Curl up in a ball and cry suck.
(Except no curling up. That bench. That blasted pale blue bench with the glass surround. I hate space travel. I never ever want to have to make a phone call in a cheesy sci-fi movie. Never.)
She was real nice, and very patient with me, and we finished all the tests but one successfully, and the one I couldn’t make myself do was the easy one. But so long. So much sitting up on that bench.
***
She lets me back to the waiting room, where I get to lay back on the couch and recover and try to finish filling out my forms. We get called to the exam room. Another chair. Happy. Bench bad, chair good. I’m feeling sorta human again by the time the nurse pops in and says she needs to check my O2 sats while I walk.
Hey, no problem. I have O2, the ER knows it. And I wanna see what happens when I walk. And I walked all the way into this place. I can do this.
***
Or not.
Sheesh, what is this? She clips the pulse-ox on my finger, then takes off on a lap around the nurse’s station. And I’m supposed to follow her? She’s like running.
She’s not really running. She’s walking like a normal person. Like people who go for walks. Not like that pansy heart-attack-detecting stress test treadmill at the ER that goes 1.3 miles per hour. The first lap I’m with her: Workin’ it, breathing hard — hard like running hard even though we’re only walking, but I’m with her. Lap 2 is a stretch. I’m coughing. She’s twice as chubby as me, and looking all cute and pert and I wanna smack her, except, too tired. Surely this is going to end.
Lap 3 just sucks. I’ve never worked so hard in my life sucked. Natural childbirth is a breeze compared to this sucks. And then.
She does it again.
Another lap.
Yeah, I cried. I totally cried.
***
So this is sobering. Sitting quietly at home, checking Facebook and writing stuff, I feel like a normal person. Walking around the nurses’ station is the truth serum to end all truth serums.
***
This is the doctor’s office, which means you wait around a lot. SuperHusband and I both brought things to do, and both of us don’t do them. I lay back on the pulmonologist’s exam table thing, which really is perfectly angled for people who don’t breath much, or in my case people who breath too much. Eventually I recover from the evil ordeal. I try not to think about it. How about we talk about things?
SuperHusband is sober. Sober sober.
“I need to figure out what to do,” he says, “about the kids’ education. If you can’t homeschool.”
I know what he means. Exactly what he means. Neither of us has it in us to say it.
This is my topic. I run him through the list of options. There are the Catholic schools – not so bad. That would be good, and they offer financial aid that takes into account extenuating circumstances, it’s not just your total income they look at. There are some homeschool places locally the older kids can take classes by the subject. There are the online homeschool classes. There’s a K-to-something Christian school I’d be okay with, that’s on his way to work. The corner public elementary school is not that bad, and here’s the after school program that you want — they send the kids home at dinner time with homework already done. The older kids cans can dual enroll at the community college their latter years of high school.
We run through all the options.
He’s reassured. It’s not impossible. He could do this. The kids could be okay.
I think to myself: There’s no way he’s going to remember all this.
Should I write him a tutorial? Or just let one of my friends tell him what to do?
***
My lungs were fine. Perfectly absolutely fine. Must be something else, doctor says.
I do not punch him when he asks me if I’ve just been a little stressed lately. Um, did your nurse not chart what happened out there on those laps, sir?
We have a pretty good guess at what it is, and after a few stern words to bring him back to reality, doc straightens up his act and gets us in with a cardiologist, stat.
***
That’s our day. I came home tired. Very tired. A few hours of recovery time, and as long as I sit still I feel like a normal person. I get some work done, and follow-up with retreat lady to explain that no, actually, someone else needs to do the sitting up and talking for me.
***
If our guess is right on the dx, my odds are decent. That’s nice.
