surrender

non-subject ~ "other peoples stories"

(aww ~ 01/27/10)
***

I draw almost a blank with the subject "other people's stories."  I don't have authority to write another person's story; but other's stories inspire to continue penning my own.

The Bible is filled with other people's stories.

There was a time when my "true self" was who the Bible says I am, not so much in the stories, but in the doctrinal Pauline epistles, those letters supposedly addressed to the believers in this day and age.  If my story veered from the "Christ in me," that story wasn't really me; it wasn't "true," because the "real me" was the "Christ in me."  The past was to be "declared null and void."

Looking back, that mindset was soul murder.

The real me is Carol.  The real me is what I've lived, what I've felt, what I've experienced, what I've loved, what I've hated. Too often, I've hated myself.

I sat naked on the side of the bed.  The year was 1993, in latter December.  I would have been 35 years old. I was naked so I could breathe; clothing, even loose clothing, stifled me.  Plus I'd get so hot struggling for breath.

I sat naked, leaning forward, elbows propped on my knees. As anyone with asthma knows the leaning forward is an attempt to catch some air. Life-giving air, something we take for granted until it is robbed.  I refused to again go to the hospital.

I'd had continued bouts of pneumonia since late September. I'd taken my normal courses of action repeatedly. I'd gotten to know them well since developing the asthma in 1982.  Steroids. Antibiotics. Theodur. Epinephrine. My nebulizer. Intravenous drugs and an intravenous vitamin/mineral cocktail so I could god-damn breathe.  Breathe...

I was wheezing horribly.  A bit earlier, John, my husband, had injected the epinephrine via the needle and syringe into my upper arm. The elephant on my chest, the cement in my lungs, the fatigue, the horrid self-hatred from being unable to live up to the "Christ in me," unable to believe for my healing, the constant production of mucous, the ups and downs of trying to hope.

The homeopathy, the supplements, the drugs.  Why the fuck did none of it work?!! What was so damn wrong with me as a person that my own body would not respond?!!   It was supposed to respond, damn it!!  It was supposed to respond...

I would not go to the hospital, not again. I think John understood, and perhaps he too secretly prayed for my body's death, just to ease the misery, just for rest.  If I could only rest.

It was midnight as I sat on the side of our king-size bed; naked, sweating, struggling, my elbows on my knees, my head light, emotions reeling with fear and anxiety and self-hatred and thinking "this was it."  I wanted to die. But what about my kids?

My kids. They were only 4 and 6 years old.

Due to the recurrent pneumonia the past few months, we had to hire two people to come in our home to help care for the home and the children. Mark was in our fellowship and the girl, I can't recall her name now, was a teenage homeschooler.  In addition to Mark and the homeschool teen, our friend Ron, an ER physician, was coming by regularly to check on me.  Tanya, another friend and respiratory therapist, was also making routine stops. Like Mark, both Ron and Tanya were in our fellowship.

I looked at my nebulizer which sat on the three-tiered bookshelf by our bed.  The bedroom light was off, but the bathroom light was on.  The bathroom was adjacent to the bedroom and provided enough light for me to prepare and work the nebulizer.  But why wasn't the albuterol, the medicine that I mixed with saline and put into the neb medicine cup, why hadn't it been helping me!?!  It used to help.

Why was nothing helping!?!

I called my homeopath, Diana. She was in Nevada, half way across the country, at a Navajo healing conference. I loved Diana. To me, she was a true healer. She had given me the phone number at the conference center and told me to call if I needed her. Someone answered the phone. I asked for Diana. Then I heard her voice, on the phone line with me. An answered prayer. Between gasps and tears I told her, "I can't go again to the hospital; I won't go. It doesn't help.  I'd rather die. Nothing is helping, damn it! NOTHING!!! I won't it to end..."

She sat with me on the other end of the phone.  Her tender voice helped calm me a bit,  but I continued in my suffocative state. She listened to my heaves and the wheezing and the snot and the pain and the agony.

She stated something risky, but what else could she do? "Carol, this may sound strange, but can you try to get into the attack...to not fight it.  To somehow accept it."   "I'll try," I rattled.  After what seemed only a few minutes, but in reality was probably 15 or 20, we both hung up.  Her last words were that she was going to do a Buddhist, long-distance, meditative practice to see if she could have any effect from a distance.

Oh boy...was she trying to operate devil spirits to heal me?  I didn't care. It didn't matter. I needed to breathe.

My chest rattling, my body still propped on the side of the bed, I picked up the small bottle of albuterol liquid medication that sat beside the nebulizer on the bookshelf. I stared at the label on the bottle.  I turned it, looking it over, trying to think. Something wasn't right, but I didn't know what.

I sat the bottle down and picked up the nebulizer cup that holds the medication.  I unscrewed the top of the cup.  The top has a mouthpiece on it. The bottom part of the cup, that screws to the top, is connected to the tube that connects to the nebulizer, the machine that makes its droning, guttural medical sound as it works its magic of dispersing liquid into vapor that I then inhale into my lungs through the mouthpiece. I poured in the proper amount of albuterol and mixed it with the proper amount of saline.  I screwed the cap with its mouthpiece back onto the cup base. I switched the nebulizer on; the droning hum began.

But, instead of putting the mouthpiece into my mouth, I just held the medication cup, my hands wrapped around it like a coffee cup. The machine hummed. Through the handheld cup, the vapor evaporated into the room.  I held the cup for comfort; the medicine hadn't been helping for weeks.  But it used to help; it used to help...

Sitting and leaning forward, still propped with my elbows on my knees, naked and sweating and trembling from the epinephrine, holding the vaporizing neb cup for comfort, with the elephant on my chest and cement in my lungs... I closed my eyes to enter the attack, to try not to fight it.