This Life is a Fleeting Breath...

This life is a fleeting breath
And wither and how I shall go,
When I wander away with death
By a path that I do not know?
-Louise Chandler Moulton
(1805-1938)

Iron Lung

So His Highness ordered that I be tethered to R2D2 or an oxygen tank until further notice. That includes all three scenarios: moving, sitting, and sleeping. Life with two prongs up your nose. I asked if I'd ever be oxygen independent. He didn't know. I asked his associate, Dr Patrick Chae (whom I couldn't stand). He didn't know, either. I asked the sweet little birdies in the trees that sing in the springtime. They pooped on my head. Now, if I asked you (hypothetically, of course, since no one reads this damn thing) if you'd want to live like that, what would you say? I wasn't yet convinced that I would survive, but I sure as hell didn't want to spend the rest of my life dependent on a machine. I know it's a terrible analogy, but in my own feeling-sorry-for-myself mind, it reminded me of the iron lungs that were used back in the 50's during the polio epidemic. I read an article online about a woman named Diane Odell who died recently after spending fifty-eight years in an iron lung. Fifty-eight years! She contracted polio when she was three and died at sixty-one when the generator failed in her home in Jackson, Tennessee. How ironic is that: she survived a disease that was an absolute scourge when she was a kid, only to meet her demise because of an electrical storm that knocked out the power she needed to draw breath! Okay, so here's the thing...would I want to live like that? Would you? My answer is an emphatic "no!" Of course being hooked up to a concentrator is not the same thing as being in an iron lung, but I found the possibility of not eventually being able to breathe on my own brutally depressing. I kept being reminded by my sister and others about how very far I'd come, that I needed to be patient. I didn't want to be patient. I wanted to be healthy...I wanted to be well.