{"id":374,"date":"2009-04-17T18:52:24","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T22:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gloriacrist.com\/blog\/?p=374"},"modified":"2009-04-17T18:56:56","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T22:56:56","slug":"give-us-this-day-our-daily-breath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gloriacrist.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/give-us-this-day-our-daily-breath\/","title":{"rendered":"Give Us This Day Our Daily Breath."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Breathing in and breathing out. The long slow inhale of exhaustion, frustration and anticipation.\u00a0 The quick exhale of excitement, contentment and fear.\u00a0 The first breath of life and the last gasp before death.\u00a0 The quick rapid breathing marking time with heartbeats-the heaving of every in and out-in desperate attempts to make each breath count. Each and every breath.\u00a0 Air force. Life force. The essence of breathing.\u00a0 Of being.\u00a0Just breathe.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I watched my mom breathe for the last six days-or rather fight for each breath.\u00a0 Carbon dioxide competing with oxygen-neither one doing much for her because her lungs\u00a0did not have the capacity to expand.\u00a0Her lungs were\u00a0 fighting for air in between each\u00a0cough.\u00a0 Each cough an angry eruption of time.\u00a0 Watching her chest heaving and whistling-not a happy tune at all.\u00a0 Each system in her entire being fighting for it’s own right to\u00a0exist- and neither one willing\u00a0or able to help the other out.\u00a0\u00a0Mom’s\u00a0system is\u00a0in deep need.\u00a0 In this ongoing battle-and I do mean battle- of life and death- it is a race to see how long life is willing to fight.\u00a0 How long\u00a0life will go up against death-somewhere up there-hovering around and teasing us all.<\/p>\n

There is a look my mom has now more than not.\u00a0 I am not used to it.\u00a0 Nor is she.\u00a0 It is wide eyed and tinged with what if.\u00a0 It shows in every deep and well earned crevice of her face.\u00a0 Her bright eyes are not so bright anymore-the ones that always smiled regardless of the situation-stare more than not and look out onto her\u00a0 ocean as if to store it all in to the forever place in her mind.<\/p>\n

“What are you going to do?”- the case manager asks me as she hooks mom up to the oxygen machine.<\/p>\n

Overnight there are life giving machines in my mom’s house.\u00a0 She who hates machines now has two helping her\u00a0breathe with each and every automated hum.<\/p>\n

“You know you are running out of options here”. ”\u00a0I mean, what are ya’ll gonna do?”,\u00a0the case manager\u00a0says as she adjusts tubes and counts liters like it is second nature.<\/p>\n

Mom just sits there.<\/p>\n

“How long do I have to do this?” she asks us both.\u00a0 She does not want to do this but she\u00a0is giving in because she knows she has to.\u00a0 She sits akimbo on the\u00a0sofa\u00a0in the same spot as she does everyday.\u00a0 Only strangers and stupid family members sit in her spot.<\/p>\n

“Let’s try for thirty minutes”, I say sounding more parental than I wanted to.<\/p>\n

Mom looks at her watch- as if she will remember to mark the time from start to finish.\u00a0 But she will not remember and for the next hour- we repeat the same conversation and she looks at her watch to mark the time from start to finish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Am I through yet?”\u00a0<\/p>\n

She is agitated and anxious like a child counting time out minutes from start to finish.<\/p>\n

“Yes, mom.”\u00a0 ” You are done.”\u00a0 I say, sounding more parental than I wanted to.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Mom removes the tubing from her nose like it is bad medicine.<\/p>\n

The case manager looks up from her writing and says to my mom,<\/p>\n

“You’ll be begging for that stuff before too long”<\/p>\n

Great.\u00a0 My mom.\u00a0 The oxygen addict.<\/p>\n

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