October 18, 2007

• Healthy Instincts

  I wrote recently about my will to live, in connection with pneumonia and the difficulty I have been having breathing.  I used the word, “anoxia,” when what I really meant was, “hypoxia,” low oxygen to the brain, not no oxygen to the brain.  That is a distinction I should know.  In my right mind, I do know it, but I have been subject to a mild dementia lately, due to the hypoxia of pneumonia.

  I like using words like hypoxia, ataxia, aphasia, etc., because they take fewer keystrokes and less space on the page than their definitions do.  Sometimes I forget, or ignore the fact, that some readers don’t know what I mean.  Occasionally, I get comments telling me that someone had to look up a word.  That tells me that I’m expanding someone’s vocabulary.

  In my current condition, it might be wiser to stick to standard words, or even monosyllables.  That’s not effing likely, so I’ll just have to accept the risk of sounding stupid as I type from my stream of consciousness with my oxygen starved brain.(at first, I typed, “not bloody likely,” but recently I learned that
  effing is the new bloody and I didn’t want to misrepresent myself as a
  bloody Brit, anyway)

  Last night while we had Greyfox on the speaker phone, Doug was in the kitchen making me a cup of tea.  He said, “Are you the one who has been putting the torn Splenda® packets back in the basket?  It sure wasn’t me!”

  I answered him, something to the effect that I wasn’t aware of having done that but wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I had, since I have been stumbling around here (ataxia) with an oxygen starved brain.  At least that is what I was trying to say, but the words didn’t come out right (aphasia), so I had to say it again… and again, before both Doug and Greyfox understood what I was trying to say.

  Greyfox’s response was, “I sure hope you haven’t lost any important brain cells from that.”  Though admittedly imperfect, my wetware is functioning better than my input/output systems, so I started wondering just which of my brain cells might be important, or might seem important to my husband, in contrast to those that were (relatively, I hope) unimportant to him.  I love each of those little cells equally, you see.  They all are important to me.

  I had been thinking about brain cells even before Greyfox brought up the subject.  I had noticed behavioral changes in myself and wondered if they were fever related and temporary or possibly more permanent and due to brain changes.  I had observed, in addition to weakness and decreased muscle control, my emotions were more labile than usual and I tended to be more jocular, boisterous (in a conversational way, not physically), and what I’ll have to call “silly” for want of a better word.

  Today, I did some web research on the effects of hypoxia.  It was reassuring.  I learned that mild to moderate hypoxia usually has no lasting effects beyond the hypoxic episode.  Severe hypoxia or anoxia, however, can have some pretty awful and permanent effects, including coma and death.  I’m glad I haven’t gone that far.  Since I haven’t completely lost consciousness, my hypoxia hasn’t gone past moderate.

  This is where the healthy instincts come in.  It might be a misnomer to call them instincts, actually.  There has been some conditioning involved, through over four decades of experience with asthma attacks and hypoxia associated with the dyspnea of M.E.   I don’t know when I learned, or if I always knew, to stop when I got short of breath, bend over so my head was lower than my heart, and push the old air out and pull new air in with all my might.

  I do recall that this time, even before I’d learned that I have pneumonia, when I was starting up the ladder to work on the roof and darkness began closing in on the edges of my vision, my legs started shaking and my heart racing, I paused on the rung I was on until the blackness receded, backed slowly down the ladder, bent over and rested my hands on my knees to keep from pitching over on my head… and just breathed for a while.  Then I apologized to Doug, who was already on the roof, and told him he’d have to finish fixing the roof without me.

  Since then, I haven’t attempted to climb any ladders, but I’ve had to stop and drop my head more than a few times while trying to get from place to place.  I have also given priority to the function of my diaphragm as necessary, focusing on it and ignoring everything else when that was what I needed to do to avoid blacking out.  Such techniques have kept me from losing consciousness, and presumably (if my sources are correct) have kept me from losing important brain cells.  That’s reassuring.

  

  • 6:13 pm
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