I've been thinking about the week I lost my breath.
SUNDAY
January 4th is a lazy Sunday morning. No church for us because Becky’s choir isn’t singing, so we sleep in until after eight, then make our way downstairs to breakfast and the Sunday papers. As soon as I’m seated, I’m short of breath. This is weird!
I inhale deeply, exhale, repeat three or four times and my breathing is back to normal. I’m fine until after lunch, when I climb the stairs to the den and settle in to watch a football game. I’m short of breath again, as if climbing the stairs is a chore for my lungs. Again, three or four deep breaths and I’m back to normal. Then a minute or more at the dinner table to stop the soft panting. By bedtime I’m lying in the dark, my pulse too quick, breathing rapidly for two minutes, trying to fall asleep.
What’s going on?
MONDAY
As I blink awake on Monday I’m breathing naturally, and I lay in the early-morning light, relieved. I’m certain yesterday’s problem was just a passing nuisance.
Until I sit up, and I’m immediately out of breath. I take deep gulps until I find a comfortable rhythm. As I walk to the bathroom, I plant my hands on the counter and gulp again and again, until I’m breathing normally. It goes on like this whenever I get up to go to a different part of our home. I don’t tell Becky any of this because I don’t want to worry her. I feel more confused than frightened, so it can’t be that serious.
TUESDAY
On Tuesday morning before we’re out of bed, Becky says, “I heard you wheezing when we climbed into bed last night.”
I tell her it’s fine as long as I’m sitting or lying down but as soon as I move, my lungs close and I’m taking quick deep breathes to get enough air.
I sit up and here it is again: I’m panting for three minutes until my lungs are full and calm. By noon I wonder if I should call my doctor. I’m working from home and have only five clients today on Zoom or by phone. I take the time to catch my breath between each and hope by evening whatever is happening to me is under control. Becky checks on me between clients, watches me as I take several minutes to catch my breath each hour.
By the time I climb the stairs after dinner to head for bed, I have to lean on the top railing for two or three minutes, gasping, before I stumble into bed and spend several minutes trying to find the deep breaths that are so slow to come. My breathing calms and I slip into sleep, but when I get up and get to the bathroom, I have to sit instead of stand so I can lean on my knees, panting for minutes again. Now I’m afraid.
WEDNESDAY | 9:00AM
It’s my first day back in my office since before Christmas, I have seven clients to see, and I’m reluctant to listen to my body carefully enough to consider cancelling the day. I’m panting intermittently through breakfast, the shower, and getting dressed, often stopping to breathe deeply to get enough air in my lungs to carry on.
But I have a plan: If I can get to my office before my first client at nine, I can take the time to catch my breath, then sit with each of them without losing control of my breathing. I assure Becky this plan will work, get downstairs to my car in the garage; at work, I decide to park in the handicap space closest to the building’s entrance, grab my brief case and lunch, take several deep breaths to fill my lungs, and head for the building’s front door and elevators.
I nod to the security guard without speaking, because I don’t want her to think I’m having a problem, even though my heart is racing and I’m quietly panting, trying to conceal how hard it is to breathe. Deep breaths to the fifth floor in the empty elevator, stop to breathe deeply leaning against the wall in the hallway that ends at my office door, get enough air to unlock the door, open the waiting room, turn on the lights in my office, then collapse in my desk chair, breathing as deeply as I can to find a pocket of air that will calm me down.
Once I catch my breath, I tell myself I can make this work: deal with each client, catch my breath, make my way through the full day.
My first client is by phone, so as soon as I find enough air to speak, I call her and make my way through an hour without gasping. When I hang up, I put my head in my hands and breathe against what I can tell is the beginning of another bout of airlessness. I’m panting rapidly when I hear the door to the waiting room open and close. I have three or four minutes to find enough steady air to create a rhythm: inhale/exhale again and again until that pocket of air returns and I head for the waiting room.
“Are you okay?” he asks, as I pant to get to my chair.
“Just a bit short of breath,” I say, “but it’s fine.” Seated, I find that shallow rhythm that gets me through this hour, and which I repeat with my eleven and twelve o’clock clients.
WEDNESDAY | 1:00PM
I spend my lunch hour sitting on the couch, not daring to move as I allow myself to breathe normally for close to an hour. I barely eat; I’m not hungry but singularly focused on managing my breathing. I keep it like this, slowly inhale and exhale, heart rate steady and no longer racing. By the end of the hour, I think that my heart and lungs have recovered.
When the waiting room door opens and closes at 2:00, I press myself up from the couch and stand for a moment; still calm and smiling to myself at my success. By the time my client and I are seated my heart rate and shallow breaths speed up, but I finesse the hour with no need to move out of my chair.
“See you next Wednesday,” they say, and I close the door and get to my desk chair.
WEDNESDAY | 3:00PM
It’s 3:00pm and the crisis begins.
My heart rate accelerates, breathing is difficult, but I once again put my head in my hands, lean on my desk and begin what has worked earlier in the day: breathing as deeply as I can until I find that pocket of air that allows me to calm down.
Three minutes.
Five minutes.
No pocket.
Ten minutes.
It’s like my lungs are filling up with water; there is no air. I’m in trouble. I can’t breathe. I try harder. Find air, any air. Find a way to breathe. Oh God! For the first time, I really think I might die here, leaning on my elbows, my lungs useless.
Suddenly, a small pocket of air materializes, which I press into my lungs, still lunging after more air than this pocket provides. I need my doctor. I phone his office, say to the receptionist that I can’t breathe, and wait two minutes until he checks everyone’s availability.
“He can see you at 4:30,” he says. That’s an hour from now. I can make it for an hour.
I’ll be there, I assure him, and hang up. I cancel my remaining clients as my heart rate accelerates and my lungs begin gasping again. But I now have an obsession: get to my doctor’s office. Everything in me believes that if I can do this, he will take care of me.
Each time I find a bit of air, I make a bit of progress. Pack my briefcase and turn off my computer. Sit, gasp for several minutes, wondering if air will come. Turn off the lamps, close the waiting room, sit for ten minutes. I step into the empty hallway and lean against the wall outside my office, gasping but determined to make it to the elevator. It takes two or three minutes to breathe, then I stagger down the hall and push the ground-floor button.
A man I’ve never seen comes around the corner; he’s going down.
“You okay?” he asks. I tell him I’m having trouble breathing but I’m headed to my doctor’s office.
“Can you help me with the elevator?” I say.
“Sure,” he says, and I take his arm and step into the elevator, breathing in a panic. In the lobby he gets me to a chair. I can’t breathe. I fall into the chair so I can sit and recover. He tells the security guard that I need help, and she comes over to me.
“Do you want me to call 911?” she asks.
“I need to get to my doctor,” I tell her. This is the most important thing in the world. I have to get to his office.
“I can call 911,” she says, clearly dubious.
“No,” I say. “If I can get to my car, I can drive to my doctor’s office.”
She offers to get my car and bring it to the curb. I tell her her where it is, hand her my keys, and sit, terrified, gasping for the elusive air.
Janette and Sam, friends who work in the building, get out of the elevator and see me, breathless and gasping.
“Are you okay?” Janette asks. “Can we call 911? I can drive you to the ER.”
I’ve got an appointment with my doctor, I tell them, panting. Just then the security guard pulls my car to the curb, twenty yards from where I’m sitting. I just need enough air in my lungs to make it to my car. It takes three or four minutes to get enough, then Sam helps me stand and he, Janette, and the security guard walk me to my car, where I collapse into the driver’s seat, panting heavily.
“I’ll be okay to drive when I catch my breath,” I say between gasps. It takes another five minutes as they stand at my open window, still volunteering to drive me to the ER.
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WEDNESDAY | 4:00PM
“I’m okay,” I say, as I put the car in gear and slide into the lane. It’s working. I’m sitting, not moving, just driving. I make it to the freeway and am particularly careful: You’re not at your best, so get in the right lane.
It takes ten minutes to get to the small parking lot behind my doctor’s building, where I park and sit for a minute; my breathing is shallow but not out of control.
Two deep breaths, then I get out of the car and immediately my lungs close as I shuffle twenty yards from my car to the waiting room, where I once again fall into a chair, gasping.
The nurse, whom I know, signals for me to come with her to an examining room, but I wave her off. I’m barely able to say that I can’t breathe and have to sit until I catch my breath. She sits next to me, watches me struggling.
“Why didn’t you go to the emergency room?” she asks with a touch of exasperation. I wanted to get to Stephen, I tell her, and she shakes her head at my dangerous foolishness.
I’m finally able to follow her down the hallway to yet another chair, where my doctor Stephen, his PA, the nurse, and two staff surround me. Stephen quickly takes vital signs as the PA puts an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. Stephen dials the phone and within five minutes, the room is packed, as seven EMTs join the crowd in the office and hallway with their heart monitors and blood pressure machines.
“How are you feeling?” one of them asks.
“Taken care of,” I answer. I’m not alone, and these people know how to help me.
WEDNESDAY | 5:00PM
A few minutes later I’m on a gurney in the back of one of two ambulances. Both of them, sirens blaring, take me to the Emergency Room at Huntington Memorial Hospital. Stephen calls Becky as I left his office, and she calls Shannon and Brendan, our fifty-something kids. They arrive soon after I do, and I begin to believe for the first time that I’ll be okay.
EPILOGUE
I was in the hospital for five days. Though the initial fear was that I was having a heart attack, it turned out that I had been breathless from a sudden onset of Pulmonary Embolisms, blood clots on my lungs. On the second day they ran a tube from my groin into my lungs and pulled out most of the clots in one lung and enough in the other that the clotting could be controlled with medication.
I came as close to dying as I’ve ever been. I’m recovering slowly. I have to let my lungs and heart recover from the ordeal and regain the energy I used up during all of this. I feel physically weak and emotionally exhausted, but I’m breathing normally.