Pity Party

Black Lung, Black Lung, oh your hand's icy cold,
As you reach for my life and torture my soul.
Cold as that water hole deep in that dark cave,
Where I spent my life's blood diggin' my own grave.
~Hazel Dickens

I don't know how spiritually productive it is to whine (I think not very), but I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm tired of my lungs, and today I woke up with a rather disturbing thought, they are only going to get worse as they get older. I've never smoked a cigarette in my entire life, and yet I have to live like a chain-smoker because I entered the world with a shitty pair of lungs and a nearly-as-shitty set of sinuses. My daily survival depends on some inhaled steroids and bronchodilators and there isn't a day in my life since I was 3 or 4 years old that I have been able to breathe like a normal human being without the aid of chemicals. Don't get me wrong, I'm damn grateful for the chemicals, even if it means I start glowing florescent green in my dotage, but I just wish for one day I didn't have to think about my lungs.

In actuality, it doesn't bother me that much on a daily basis. Asthma just gets incorporated into my "normal." But for once in my life I'd like to be able to get a cold, sneeze and cough and drip and feel icky for a week and then get better. I'd like to be able to drink soup, stay in bed, eat oranges, drink water, think good thoughts, and let my body take over. But instead, my sinuses become impenetrable with infection, my lungs burn and pool with fluid, my every breath becomes a wheeze and I end up hooked up to my nebulizer half the day, jittery from the meds, stomach revolting due to antibiotics, and hacking up all sorts of crap every time I breathe too deeply.

Such is my current state as I wallow in self-pity. This time with a new development, a right ear that doesn't seem to be working properly. And yet, as one of my favorite childhood books once said: "Could be worse." I should be grateful for my miracle drugs and my ability to receive them and to pay for them (at least for now....don't get me started). And I am. I just don't feel very strong today. I'm plum-tuckered out, as we say.

But just so I won't have wasted this whole post on a gigantic whine, here's five blessings:

1) A warm house
2) Nyquil
3) Sweet, sleepy music
4) Understanding ears on the other end of a phone line.
5) New friends