Killing Time To Stay Alive in Breathing Lessons

I am connected to a machine. It takes my blood from me, filters it, and sends it back to me. Oh, the marvels of medical science. We've come such a long way, haven't we? And yet, we have so much to learn, about everything.

I've heard people say that I am intelligent and articulate, but sometimes I feel stupid as all hell. I can be slow on the uptake; stuff flies gracefully, and sometimes with great speed, over my sometimes empty head. I can't find words. I have no way to balance myself or my thoughts in times like those. It's frustrating, and makes me weary.

You probably know the feeling. I imagine you've had it too, now and then.

I muddle through, however, and sometimes I find myself saying things I didn't know I had the power to say, and I seem to know something that I never thought I knew, or maybe I didn't really know it; maybe it just came from out of nowhere, or from God, or from the myriad of thought traveling around in the great ocean of the universe. I have no idea, and I'm not going to offer a guess. I think that would be presumptuous of me.

So here I am, connected to a machine, a rather large machine, that does for me what two little kidneys are supposed to do. My two little kidneys are, for all intents and purposes, mostly dead, so they don't do much of anything anymore. I would die without this machine or these people who operate these machines. Three times a week I come here, spending three and a half hours of my day making sure that I will have many, many more days to come, good or bad, in sickness and in health, all that stuff.

And I get the time to think too much, which I am good at, and if you're good at something, you might as well do it, and while doing it, flaunt it.

I have to be honest; I don't always like it that I have to come here and spend all this time letting a machine take my blood from me, even if it does return it to me eventually. It's tiring, and sometimes I need a nap after I'm done. Sometimes I nap during the process itself, hoping I will get the rest I need to face the rest of the day. Actually, lately it's been less stressful; I'm managing to watch what I eat and drink,and the meticulous effort to manage all that pays off in the end. I'm feeling better, and am happier, but i still think too much.

The nurse just brought me my antibiotic. She empties a small syringe of fluid into the machine, which in turn will enter my bloodstream. The antibiotic's purpose is to protect me from infection from the machine, for even though the machines are sterilized and cleaned painstakingly, one never knows what pesky little germ or virus might have successfully avoided the chemicals and could be lurking somewhere in the various filters for someone like me to come along and infect me with something.

This is how I live now; avoiding infections, watching what I eat and drink, being very careful about everything, and coming to this place three times a week for three and a half hours, to stay alive.

Praise God? Yeah, sometimes. Yell at God? Yeah, often, but I figure that God, or the universe, is strong enough, and understanding enough, to accept my anger and dismay, and somehow I find solace in that. It calms me, and theanger and resentment subsides for the time being until the next bout of self-centered whining comes along and throws me into a fit once again.

Of course, if I didn't have to come here this morning, I would have missed a wonderful sight. I would have missed the orange rising sun, and the rolling mist over the farmlands. It was the universe's expression of its imagination and creative prowess. It was beautiful, and it inspired me to feel lighter than air, just for a moment. Those moments are gifts, and they are rare.

They remind me how worthwhile these treatments are.

Sometimes that's enough to get me through. It's enough to get me to stop thinking too much. Okay, too much thinking over. Life goes on, and thankfully, so will I. May you do the same.