I’m late posting this, because I’ve been struggling to breathe. Most people don’t have to think about their lungs. Part of the autonomic nervous system, they automatically take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide around 20,000 times a day. But for people like me, breathing is more complicated. With all the smoke currently in the air, my lungs feel sore and defeated.
The first time I had a bronchial infection, I was four months old. But it wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I was finally diagnosed with asthma.
Between these two events, I struggled. At my elementary school, P.E. included twice yearly tests, where the teachers stood with stopwatches and clipboards and noted how many chin ups, pushups, and sit ups we could do in the allotted time. President Gerald Ford himself, we were told, had set these standards to help us get fit.
They did not help me. The six-minute walk and run was my nemesis. Our teacher pointed out two lines on the blacktop, between which we needed to run until she called time. “Go as quickly as you can,” she said, “and walk only if you must.” Year after year, I was lapped over and over by my peers, as I struggled to breathe. Afterward, my spit tasted like blood for hours, and my lungs felt as if they were pincushions stuck full of needles. I thought everyone must feel what I felt, and it was due to my own failing that I struggled.
In my early twenties, a supervisor wrote me up. “Get more healthy,” she admonished, in response to my being off sick with a bronchial infection for two weeks. I was ashamed at my body’s betrayal of me. But getting more healthy was as impossible for me as genie-ing myself to Paris. I already exercised, drank lots of water, ate healthy food, and rarely stayed out late. Some of my coworkers partied nearly every night, and never missed a day’s work. That’s when I realized that some of us are just more prone to illness than others. My body wasn’t betraying me, it was just being my body.
Fourteen years ago, I had to stop working because of my health. As year has passed into year, other chronic illnesses have joined my lungs, until I’ve come to dread the next occupant that comes along. And there will be a next one – there always is.
Most recently, on a rare clear day, when my lungs felt good, I decided to go on a hike. We have a state park just down the road from us, and I love getting exercise and watching all the birds and wildlife. I started out on the dirt trail, and had only just gotten to the edge of the Carquinez Strait, along which this path wanders, when suddenly, I was airborne. I struggled to regain my balance like a cartoon character who realizes they have just run off the edge of a cliff, but failed. I landed on my left knee, then my right, then hands and elbow. Covered with blood, I walked back to my car and drove myself home. When I took off my pants to look at the damage, my left knee had a deep horseshoe-shaped gash, and I could see pale white of my cartilage. I thought of driving myself to urgent care, but found myself going into shock.
Six hours and twenty-two stitches later, I’m now in a knee immobilizer for two weeks. So much for going on a hike. But I’m grateful I didn’t break anything, including my head.
Over the past years, I’ve realized that, while I didn’t get a body that can run marathons, I did get one that keeps trying and trying no matter how difficult the next bang is. I am grateful for my mind, with which I can read and write, and my hands, however crooked, that tend my garden. I have a roof over my head, and food in my belly. I am loved by, and I love, my beautiful wife, Birte, and our daughter, Neysa, who will always be my heart. I have my dog, Nalani who, at eleven years old, is still eager to comfort me long before I know I’m in need of comforting.
And I’ve realized that we all have stories; we all suffer.
I was at Disneyland once as a young adult, waiting in an interminable line for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, when two small children popped in front of me to be with their mother. They were British, and the children, a boy and a girl, whined, “But Mummy, it’s not fair!”
“Life’s not fair,” she snapped. “Get used to it.”
I often think about that woman at Disneyland all those years ago, and her two, now middle-aged kids. And I agree with her: life isn’t fair. But it sure has its beauty, doesn’t it?
