Protect The Airway

I woke up in the middle of the night convinced I was dying.

I couldn't breathe. Not regularly. Not easily. I was gasping for air and it felt like there was a giant vice grip around my neck, choking me. I couldn't swallow because I had apparently swallowed a dozen large marbles and they were just sitting in my throat.

It's weird the thoughts you'll have as you are busy convincing yourself death is near.

All I could think, as I struggled to draw breath was, "Oh my God, I'm a bloody liar." For years, since my son died suddenly and unexplainably in the middle of the night, I have told anyone and myself I wasn't afraid of dying because I'd already lived through hell. 

Turns out, when it's 3:35 am and I can't breathe, I'm damn scared of dying.

A memory broke loose, like air escaping an old rubber tire.

"Protect the airway."

***

It had been ten days since the birth of my newest son, Skjel, and only two since a team of medical professionals had announced casually to me, the way one would declare the sky grey or the wind to be chilly, that my baby would never move the muscles in his face, not to smile, not to cry, not to anything. 

A doctor stood in front of me explaining the latest surgical procedure my infant child needed to endure. I was having a hard time understanding the mechanics of what he was saying. Chalk it up to shock, chalk it up to ignorance, but my brain could not process the words coming out of the man's mouth.

"You want to do what? With a BUTTON?" I asked him to re-explain, again, for what seems the umpteenth time.

"We need to stitch his tongue to his bottom lip, and we'll stabilize it using a couple of buttons. Imagine a hamburger. The buttons are the bun holding the patty in place."

It was crude and inelegant but it painted a picture I understood.

"But why?" I asked, still horrified by the visual.

"To protect his airway.

Skjel, buttoned for two weeks, with a successful tongue-lip adhesion.

***

I crawled out of bed, the air whistling in and out of my chest and tried gargling warm salt water as I boiled water for tea. Clutching my mug, I sat down and opened my laptop, squinting at the brightness of the screen as I googled 'how to prevent your throat swelling close'. 

Honey and lemon. 

It didn't help.

I told myself I was being ridiculous as I crawled back to bed with my laptop in my hands. My anxiety was raging out of control. 'Get a grip. Take control of the situation,' I told myself.

I coughed suddenly, causing the marbles lodged in my airway to shift and I suddenly couldn't breathe at all.

In bold red letters at the bottom of the screen it flashed:

"Always protect your airway."

***

All that stood between my son finally being discharged from the hospital and coming home, almost a half a year after he was born was a plastic dummy.

Twice a week, for weeks, my husband and I had to play with that dummy. 

I hated that dummy.

We practiced our life saving skills on that dummy, until they were rote. Hours were spent in a tiny room, learning all the various ways we could save our son's life when we would bring him home, until we were finally deemed competent enough to handle any medical emergency our son may encounter.

I saved that dummy more times than I could count. I protected that dummy's airway like my son's life would one day depend on it, not realizing four years later, it would.

"Protect his airway," my husband and I repeated like a prayer for protection, all the years my son was alive.

***

With every breath increasingly harder to draw, I called my husband. My anxiety was making the situation worse and Bruce is my voice of reason. He has always been able to restore order to the chaos and I needed this as badly at the moment as I needed air.

He listened to me struggle to breathe and to talk and within moments he told me to hang up and call our province's health line. Sometimes the only thing that works with my anxiety is a simple set of directions. So I did what I was told.

As I waited for a nurse to answer my call, an electronic voice reminded me that if this was a medical emergency to hang up the phone and dial 911. I ignored it until the nurse finally answered.

With great effort, I explained my situation to this anonymous woman, and waited for her to have some magic remedy to make my middle of the night emergency go away. Instead, she mimicked the digitized voice and quite urgently told me hang up and call 911.

I told her I was rural and I couldn't use medical resources that way. It would take them away from someone who actually needed them.

She stopped me mid-sentence and explained I was that someone who needed those services.

"Your airway is becoming obstructed. You have to protect your airway. Or you'll be dead."

***

I didn't call for an ambulance.

My husband instead called his mother, a retired nurse.

She whisked me to the hospital, where there was much rushing around, waving of arms and declarative statements made.

By the end of the day, I was home, exhausted, terribly ill, but the marbles in my throat smaller and more manageable, even if they do remind me of their existence every time I swallow.

I'm left with prescription medicine and the residue of memories trudged out from the dark corners of my memory, where I had hoped they would rot away into nothingness.

I wonder why my airway was saved and his wasn't. The arbitrariness of life hurts and haunts, an infection of spirit I know will never fully be cured. 

The demons that escaped in the middle of the night are refusing to be shuttered away and not even the bright light of dawn will scatter them.

Bad Touch

I remember the afternoon I first told my parents I had a boyfriend. A real boyfriend, not just some celebrity boyfriend who lived in my imagination, inspired by the pictures I tore out of the latest copy of Teen Beat and tacked to my bedroom walls.

Here's looking at you River Phoenix, may you rest in peace.

I was fifteen years old and swoony over a big blue-eyed blonde boy named Bruce. (I always did have a weakness for alliteration.) I was spending the week with my best friend, who just so happened to be Bruce's cousin and I was excited to tell my folks all about my new beau.

In my teenaged exuberance, I hadn't stopped to take into account how my parents, most specifically my father, would feel about their daughter entering the dating world. I ignorantly thought they'd be as excited as I was. Because! Hearts! Flowers! True Love! Forever!

Since the boy who held my affection happened to be my father's best friend's youngest son, a boy my family had known his entire life, I naturally assumed there would be much praise and congratulations bestowed when I told my parents my wonderful news.

I stood, holding the telephone to my ear, grinning from ear to ear, staring out upon the same fields my father had stared at when he was my age, and waited for one of my parents to answer the ringing phone.

My dad picked up.

I launched into my excited tale, words shot like rapid-fire bullets into his ear, as tiny invisible hearts swirled above my head. 

My dad? He made about as much noise as a rock does as it sits in a driveway. I barely noticed as I chattered on. Innocent and so, so stupid. 

When I finally managed to stop long enough to inhale, my dad asked a question I had not expected:

"Why him? What's so special about him?"

You could say familiarity had bred contempt. You could say my father had maybe hoped I'd date a city slicker instead of the son of his oldest friend. You could even say I had probably shocked him into not really knowing what else to say. Any of this could be true. Perhaps all of it was. 

All I knew was it wasn't the reaction I was expecting. I didn't know how to answer; so shocked and stunned was I by his question.

I muttered something completely inelegant and trite, as were most of the things that came out of my mouth at that age tended to be and I staggered under the weight of my dad's obvious disapproval.

My love bubble had burst. Thanks Dad.

I had forgotten that conversation with my father, and the words he said. I had forgotten his reaction and how, for one second, it made me question everything I had been feeling towards the boy I later ended up marrying.

That conversation, that memory, had long been relegated to the dustiest corners of my brain, eroding a little further with each day that passed. 

And then my daughter started dating a boy she has known for most of her life, the son of a man my husband has known for much of his life. Suddenly, memories I didn't remember I had have all come flooding back to center stage. 

Nostalgia has washed over me, bathing me in the past, reminding me that the innocence I see upon my daughter's face was once mirrored on my own.

Is it wrong that I covet the boyfriend's truck? Complete with haybale for traction?

I never fully realized how soothing nostalgia is as a parental balm. It's probably the only thing that is keeping me from walking around screaming "Bad touch! Bad touch!" every time I see my daughter's boyfriend so much as look at my daughter.

(Okay, so I may have already yelled 'bad touch!' once or twice at them, but it was all in good fun. Maybe.)

But what I've come to realize as my daughter starts to explore her dating world, is that nostalgia isn't such a soothing balm for Bruce. It is more like Tiger's balm. The nostalgia and memories, they burn. Or maybe it is just that daddies are predisposed to growling about their daughter's boyfriends, regardless of how awesome those boyfriends may be.

I am fully enjoying watching my husband navigate this minefield my daughter has so thoughtfully lured him into. It's given me insight into my own father's reactions all those years ago. Because yes, I really did marry my father.

My husband hasn't stopped twitching in weeks. And these two kids haven't even been on a real, un-chaperoned date as of yet. 

If and when that finally happens? Well, I can't guarantee I won't be twitching right along with Bruce. Probably while reminding him that it was all our "bad touches" that lead us to this moment to begin with.

Heaven help us all.

Most Especially Snotty

I didn't write here this week because I was dying.

Okay, not literally, but at moments I was certainly wondering if death would have been kinder. There are a lot of jokes made about man colds and how whiny men can be when they get sick and to be honest, I've never really understood them. (Even though I've been known to make them.) (The depth of my hypocrisy knows no bounds, really.)

The truth is, Bruce is rarely ill and when he does succumb to the latest virus or plague, he's terribly stoic about it. It's very annoying.

Mostly, because I am the least stoic person around when I'm snotty and congested.

I whine. Loudly and often. 

I don't do well sick. I do sick even less well when Knox is also home sick. Because you know what is worse about being knocked on your arse with the plague? It is having to take care of someone else who is more plagued than you.

It was the sick caring for the sick, which is worse than the blind leading the blind. Or so I'd assume.

There is no solace in whining to Knox as I feed his fever and starved his cold. Or vice versa. Whichever. Whining to Knox is useless. He can't hear me. And to be honest, that's probably a good thing. If suffering were a contest, he's always going to win.

If this week was a test on my inner strength and maturity levels, I'll admit it, I likely failed. So you know, it wasn't much different than most normal weeks. 

Zing.

Luckily, Knox and I are on the upswing, the snot is receding and fever has broken. My teenagers won't have to mutiny this ship after all. I'm sure they were each considering it at some point this week, as they listened to Knox and I trying to out whine one another.

I wish I were one of those stoic people like my husband who can be ill and do it with grace and dignity. But over the past 37 years I've learned that as much as I'd like to be refined and elegant, I can't manage it. Most especially when I'm ill. 

No. I'm always going to be the girl who is loud and brash and irritating. Most especially when I'm ill.

To you classy genteel folks, I salute you. I sincerely wish I could be more like you. Most especially when I'm shoving tissues up my nose to absorb my snot.

Have a good weekend everyone.