I Would Have Preferred Gills

AWW: june 13, 2012
non-subject ~ to smell
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Drowning in one's own's fluids is a horrid existence.

That's what asthma feels like. The gurgling bubbles of mucus stir while they sit encased in pink flesh surrounded by ribs. Yes, the bubbles stir and they sit, like thick, wet cement.

I never, ever, ever, ever want to go back there again. "There" being those times for years, when I prayed for death. When I could not understand why I was so tormented. Why didn't inhalers work for me? Why did steroids become my enemy turning my skin into a leathery, thick armor? During the hive attacks, I used to say my skin became like a crocodile's; my dermis would swell and itch and fever, and ooze tiny drops of blood from scratching.

But, when the attacks were not present, one would never know I lived with such swollen horror...except that my sinuses were constantly plugged with polyps. Gray, pearly, oyster-jellyfish-like growths that packed my sinus cavities. I could feel them if I stuck my finger far enough up my nostrils. I could see them in a mirror when I shined a flashlight on them.

I waited until a few months of being unable to breathe at all through my nose before I had my first sinus surgery. I was put under with general anesthesia and my sinuses were rotor-rootered. I can't recall exactly how much was extracted. At least a cupful. It was 1984.

I thought that would be it. I'd be rid of the polyps for good.

But within three months, I couldn't smell again. Within eight months, I couldn't breathe through my nose again. Again, I waited until I could no longer stand the insanity of it.

Do you know what it is like to have no air, nada, zilch, none, circulating up through the nose and into the sinus cavities? And at the same time to live with ongoing, severe asthma attacks? My allergist at the time, Dr. Hancock, said she had never seen a case of asthma as bad as I suffered. She'd been around awhile.

I was tested multiple times for Cysitic Fibrosis. All tests came back negative.

Within a year of the first surgery, I was back on the operating table. Another rotor-rooter. Over a cup of polyps and "matter" were removed. No cancer, just 'dead tissue,' whatever that is. During this second polypectomy, windows were carved in the walls of my sinus cavity to help mucus flow. It was 1985.

Do you know what it's like to have your sinuses packed with cotton or whatever it was the surgeons used to pack them at that time? And then, a week later, to sit in a chair and have the surgeon pull the stuffing out your nostrils as you sit with your head leaning backwards and the surgeon's arms and hands moving quickly one of the other as he pulls literally feet of the manmade absorbent material out of your nostrils? First one side and then the other?

Within a year after the second surgery, I was back on the operating table. Again, now the third time, I had waited until I could no longer stand the insanity of suffocation. Again, over a cup of the dead matter was removed. Again, more windows were carved in my sinus walls. It was 1986.

I was discouraged. I was wearied. I was exhausted.

What was wrong with me as a believer?

I just wanted to be able to breathe.
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