Today is a day of gasping for breath, crushing fear, exhaustion, thirst, and hunger. The genetic condition of my heart has been acting up in ways it has not since a brief interlude in 2009.
My heart stops beating properly, the blood flow is disrupted, and all I can do it gasp for air for however long it takes my heart to reset itself. It could be 2 hours, it could be 6 or 8. At some point is may not reset at all.
This has happened 4 times in the last 5 days. It used to be the way I lived my life in the 1990’s. I am not happy to be going through it again.
I can be sleeping, working, or doing anything at all. Then my breath goes. A nurse once told me it is the “all gone” feeling. Yes. That’s it. The air stops coming. Everything is gone.
I can’t catch my breath. I can’t think. I can’t see. The only thing to do is sit somewhere. Push breath out my lips as hard as I can. Bring it back in through my nose.
The “breathing out” part is most important. We will all gasp to get breath in until the last one does not come. The trouble is we hold what we got, so push it back out. I can see that nurse today teaching me this skill so many years ago.
This is one of the 50,000 reasons my son has severe PTSD because of me. He saw this 100's of times before the age of 10, and could do nothing but cry. I'm so glad he is not here now.
Try to be calm. Do not hyperventilate. Don’t stand up. Don’t lie down. Find a way to lay my head down if I can. Open my ribs.
When it’s happening, I think it will never end.
Then by God’s Mercy it does stop. My breath comes back as if it was never gone. My heart stops leaking, and is back to pumping how it should. Then all I feel is exhaustion, thirst, and intense pain in my rib cage from the effort. I sleep, go out in the heat and smoke-filled air to get more water and food, or go back to posting on STEEM.
Minnows and redfish are dying – leaving – giving up because they cannot see a path to success. I’m trying to stop the carnage in any way I can.
My photo for this post is of some dead fish in a Kuala Lumpur Malaysia market. I used my HMNOTE 1LTE mobile phone for this photo.
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