Literary Loses to Lousy Lungs

I was supposed to be at the Poetic Principles reading at the Virginia Museum tonight. A literary-loving friend was going with me so that we could be read to by writer Randall Kenan, followed by dinner out. I've had my ticket since October and I was eager to hear this man whose fiction focuses on what it means to be black and gay in the U.S. South.

Instead, I was lying in a hospital bed, taking breathing treatments and steroids yet again. Only three days from the one-year anniversary of my 2009 diagnosis of pneumonia and I was back to coughing and wheezing. Only this time, instead of soldiering on, I went to the Emergency Room at MVC where I was told that I did not have pneumonia (whew!), but that my lungs "sounded like crap." Yes, those were the doctor's actual words. WTF?

Returning from my chest X-ray, I smiled at the man in the bed on the other side of my curtain. After my next coughing fit, he asked through the drape if I was okay, which led to a fascinating, but blind conversation. As it turned out he was a "Sir," born in Wales to a British father and Australian mother and since his grandfather had been knighted in 1935, that carried over to him and his oldest son. The things you learn through a hospital drape!

After a couple of breathing treatments, I was reluctantly moved to the CDU (Clinical Decision Unit), aka the Observation Room. I was determined not to be admitted and only agreed to four to six hours there. After my third breathing treatment, I was exhausted and requested food STAT. What I got was penne in a red meat sauce with a side of the kind of gray green beans the color of Army drab uniforms. I'm no fan of tomato sauce, but I ate all the pasta dish, although the beans remained untouched. Luckily the meal had a hefty junk food component (individually sized packages of Oreos, Cheese Nibs, Lorna Doon short breads and Ritz Peanut Butter crackers with a Schweppe's Ginger Ale to wash all those preservatives down) to flesh out the meal.

When I had arrived eight hours earlier, my lung capacity was at a pathetic 140 (optimum is 450) and rose to 220 when I got to CDU, but I wasn't allowed to leave until I got to 300. After my fourth treatment and once the steroids kicked in, I finally made it to 350 and was stripped of my IV and given prescriptions for more drugs than I can afford.

The entire staff was aware that I had one foot out the door, having been told by the ER staff that I was not willing to stay overnight. They praised my response to treatment, told me to avoid smokey places and smokers and walked me to the door.

I'm gratified and appreciative to feel better, if not normal, but totally bummed that I missed a literary evening of Randall Kenan. I wanted to hear him read from works with evocative sentences like this in his southern-raised voice:

They say that day the sun shone while the rain poured -the old folks say that's when the devil beats his wife- the day Estelle Pickett died giving birth to Clarence.

Damn these lungs!

Resolved to Stay Skewed

I've never been the type to make New Year's resolutions; if something in my life needed addressing, why wait for a holiday to change it?

I attributed my attitude to general complacency but perhaps I'd just reached the age where I pretty much was what I was and trying to change would have been futile.

That is, until this year. Back last January, I got pneumonia and by that, I don't mean walking pneumonia or bacterial pneumonia, I mean weeks of of being sick before being put on a week of complete bed rest, followed by five days in the Intensive Care Unit.

I lost over a month of my life.

Not long before that, I had done a thorough cleaning on an old, unfinished closet in a mid-19th century house and inhaled something to which I'd had an asthmatic reaction which degenerated into pneumonia (the pulmonary specialist thought it most likely to have been bird or rodent droppings that caused it).

In any case, the result was me being sicker than I've ever been in my entire life.

What was interesting about the whole experience was that I came out of it Changed with a capital C.

I don't know if it was a physiological reaction or just the reminder of my mortality, but I wasn't the same person once I recovered.

Habits of a lifetime went away.

Things that I used to avoid became part of my regular routine.

Judgments about choices changed.

My openness to people was altered.

Even my physical self has morphed into something different than what it was before.

And people have noticed.

Comments have been made to me about the changes in everything from my punctuality to my drinking to my breasts.

Oh, yes, and the differences in my eating habits, my optimism and my lifestyle. And the list goes on.

So given all the alterations in who I am now, I think I will make a blanket resolution, not just for 2009, but for life.

Resolved: I've accepted who I've become even if it seldom resembles who I was for most of my life.

For better or for worse, it looks like Version 2.0 is what I'll be going with from here on out.

You got a problem with that?

Two Topics To Tiptoe Around

When we look back at 2009, I doubt any of us will remember it as a banner year.

But for me it's been just the worst.

In a matter of eight weeks, I lost employment, health and love.

Happily, the only lingering traces of my extreme pneumonia are an annoying occasional cough, but the other two areas of my life are a bit more problematic.

So for the benefit of others out there like me (my fellow unemployed and dumped), may I suggest that you avoid asking us a couple of questions that only serve to remind us of our state of being and which we really don't want to answer anyway.

The first is, "Any luck finding a job yet?"

Let me assure you, when we are again employed, we will be shouting it from the rooftops, telling strangers and boring everyone with details.

Until then, it's just another time we have to acknowledge our failure.

The other question to be avoided is, "Why aren't you dating yet?"

Uh, because I'm still working through this whole broken-hearted thing? Because I'm not ready to? Because there's no point?

Believe me, if a woman like me is deliberately opting out of trying to find a partner, there's probably a good reason.

Nagging her to make the effort is not going to change her readiness for it, and it's definitely not something she needs to hear.

Or read, as in in my freaking horoscope: A new love is simply a new person awakening the feeling of love that was already inside you. It's nice to have someone unlock it for you, but not necessary. It was always there. 

Oh, really?


Take it from someone who knows, your laid off and dumped friends are happy to talk about almost anything except jobs and love.

I'm sure you can understand.

Nothing is Different, but Everything's Changed

Clearly my planets are out of alignment because it has been one seismic life event after another since mid-December.

No doubt, these things cause major stress, but I am doing my best to accept and move forward as best I can.

I've been jobless for two months, but, given the economy, that's not a very long time.

When I was laid off in 2004, the economy was much stronger and it still took me 4 1/2 months to find a job and not even one that I wanted, but one that paid the bills for 2 1/2 months until I found the job I did want.

So, no reason to be discouraged about my job state yet. I continue to send out resumes and hope for the best.

Okay, pneumonia for a month was completely out of the blue.

I almost never get sick, so being incapacitated for so long, including five days in Intensive Care, was daunting.

But, I am probably 97% recovered now so that's behind me.

I've paid my pneumonia dues, so to speak.

When a long time relationship ends unexpectedly, there's not a lot to do about it other than accept and grieve.

That simple statement belies just how devastated I was at being dumped by the person I thought was the love of my life after six years.

I had honestly thought we would grow old together; I loved him that much and thought we had committed to that.

But since you can't make someone love you, I have no choice in this awful situation.

That's where I am right now.

Will I feel differently about it in 6 months or a year or two?

I don't know, but going forward I have to hope that I won't be this sad forever.

Or maybe I will.