An asthma story...

I regularly think about my asthma days

Part of the recent recall is due to the Rona

How she can invade the immune system

Catalyze respiratory symptoms

And anosmia

I consciously notice my ease of breath

Inhale...

...Exhale

Most days without any struggle 

At all

I intake aromas

The scents so distinct

And I recall the years and years

I could not smell

I recall the decades I struggled

To breathe...

~*~

A night in December, 1993
12:00 AM. 

I sit on the edge of our king-size bed. 

Naked. 

My body drenched in sweat.

Wheezing. 

The feeling of drowning in my own fluid. 

Heavy elephant on my chest. 

Exhaustion from the relentless monster which so often visits in the wee morning hours when I'd awake  in the throes of yet another asthma attack.

This attack comes on the heels of two bouts of pneumonia in the past three months. 

I refuse to yet again go to the hospital. 

I know the hospital routine; it can't do much more, if anything, to help me.
If this attack is like my others, it will subside in a couple hours.
Hubby has already given me an injection of epinephrine.
I've taken my other asthma meds. 

I have a home nebulizer. 

But this attack seems to be hitting with an even more veracious vengeance than the usual.
I tell God, I'd rather die than go to the hospital again.
I am so tired, so very tired. 

I pick up the phone. 
Should I call Diana? It's so late. But she's in Nevada at the Navajo conference, so it's earlier there. She told me to call if I need her. 

I call. Someone answers.
I muster the ability to ask for Diana, and she is summoned.
I hear her tender voice...

Between heaves of tears and labored breathing I tell her I don't understand what is happening.
Why have I become even worse the past few months?
Why do my medicines seem to not work at all?
Why does nothing seem to be giving relief? 

Diana listens and responds gently, as always.

"Carol, it may sound odd, but can you try to embrace the attack; not fight it?"
But then I am giving in....that's not right. How can I give in?

She asks my permission to try some distance healing using a Buddhist technique. 

Diana is my homeopath. She is from Great Britain and trained in Great Britain.
She now practices from the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina.
She is a true healer. 

I love her deeply.

I give her permission.

We hang up.

Heaving and sweating and willing to give up my ghost...
I pick up the small, amber-colored glass bottle of albuterol, the medicine I use in my nebulizer. 

I look at the bottle and whisper-groan, Why aren't you working?

I unscrew the lid and squeeze the bulb pulling liquid into the dropper stem.
I squeeze the liquid into the bowl of the nebulizer's hard plastic medication cup which is hooked with a tube to the nebulizer unit.
Wheezing, sweating, trembling...
I add the saline solution.
I screw on the top of the medication cup which has the mouth piece attached to it. 

I turn on the nebulizer unit. 

It starts its mechanical low guttural hum as mist undulates out of its two open ends like a dragon exhaling smoke left over from fire.

I look at the dragon and think, You haven't been helping me at all. Why?

I don't put it to my mouth. 

Instead, I just hold the neb-cup in my hands for comfort as it makes its mist.
My naked body leans forward, elbows propped on my thighs -- the normal position when one's respiratory system is struggling for breath while its filled with fluid. 

I sit. 

Exhausted, struggling, heaving, sweating. 

Trembling, in part, from the epinephrine.

The cup mists as the machine hums.

I close my eyes and try to embrace the assault upon my body.

My mind and heart fall in with the heaves and violence.

I feel almost as if I am dreaming.

An image enters my mind and space. 

I am cradling an infant sized "blob" of black viscous goo. 

I feel I should let it go, but I have affection for it. 

It feels part of my identity.

I hold it debating what to do with it. 

I decide I can't kill it. 

I place it in an [imaginary] waterless, glass, tabletop aquarium which sits atop the bookshelf next to the nebulizer.  

In my mind's eye, I watch it ooze around

Suddenly the blob wildly attacks the side of the glass, but it can't get out.
It spreads its blob, violently sticking to the glass like it is trying to escape.
In my mental-body-heart space, I react, frantically pulling out a [imaginary] pistol.
I must kill it!! I must kill it!!!
I shoot it, dead.
The gray-black, gooey, sticky blob slowly slides down the glass.
Dead. Lifeless. Shattered glass all around.  
I feel sadness...and at the same time a sense of relief.

The blob is like my mucous. 

Thick. Sticky. 

Its violence like my asthma attacks. 

Relentless.

Its violence like my self-hatred.

The asthma attack calms shortly thereafter.

I wonder if the more-than-imaginary-very-real 'vision' is due to Diana's distance-healing practice.

Whatever happened, the attack is relieved. 

And that's what matters at the moment.

Over the next couple days I have some asthma attacks, but they aren't so violent.

I continue to hold the neb kit in my hand for comfort as it mists; I do not inhale. 

I look at the albuterol bottle wondering if my issue might be the brand; I've not used this brand before.

Within a couple days my pharmacy calls.  

The albuterol has been recalled for possible contamination with pseudomonas. 

A couple months later a friend brings me a (US News and World Report?) magazine.
The story: Over 300 people dead from contaminated albuterol. 

The article states the young, elderly, and those with compromised immune systems were effected. 

I think, Who the hell else would be using albuterol in a nebulizer? 

To think, I may have been on that list...

Had I continued to inhale...

~*~

I previously wrote about part of this night here: surrender.

~*~

Note: It may not have been US News and World Report; I searched the internet and could not find an issue with the story. I recall the story being the cover-story of the magazine, but maybe I am incorrect about that. I did find references/articles in Wall Street Journal and New York Times. There may be more online, but I don't feel like searching further. This link, from the Free Library, states the following: 

Until January, 1994, Copley Pharmaceutical was a major supplier of albuterol. Copley's product was distributed under its own name as well as under the brand names Aligen, Astra, Geneva, Goldline, Harber, Major, Moore, H.L. Moore, Qualitest, Rugby, Schein, and Xactdose.

In the closing days of 1993, Copley recalled four batches (44,000 vials each) of its 20 ml. vials of albuterol because of "microbial contamination." On January 6, 1994, the recall was expanded to include all 3.7 million bottles of the drug the firm had ever made...

I had the Goldline brand. I was not part of the class action suit, but that's another story.