bliss—a place where I could go to avoid all conflict that preceded that moment.
As my spirit began to dim, the lights from my mother’s car rolled across the ceiling like a chariot of horses from the stars. I immediately ran to the door, and when she saw me, she knew I was in bad shape. She seemed angry, not with me or herself, but with my asthma and how frequently I kept getting sick. She couldn’t understand why the hospital kept discharging me when I kept having attacks. I wasn’t embarrassed, as my pride had left and all that remained was my fight for breath. All things mundane and usual were drowned out by the seriousness of my sickness. My mom put me in the car and drove me to my primary care physician. When we got in the examination room he took one look at me and called an ambulance.
I don’t remember what happened next, but when I woke up I was in a room surrounded by machines and nurses. The nurse at my right had a warm smile for me, but had a large needle in her hand; she said she was going to draw blood. I wasn’t afraid of needles, but she was going to draw blood from an artery near my wrist for a blood gas test, an extremely painful procedure where the blood is taken from the radial artery to check the oxygen levels. It felt like a hot poker plunged into my bloodstream. There were multiple injectionsof medications, oxygen tubes up my nose, and a heparin lock. Still, I couldn’t breathe and wasn’t in a safe zone yet, as the constrictions in my lungs continued.
A week went by, but it felt like a month. Separately, my parents came to visit, and my mom brought my teddy bear Oatmeal to keep me company. I was still very weak. For an athlete, being sick or injured is one of the worst things that can happen. We work so hard to be strong and healthy that when we are not at our optimum level we feel “less than.” Even though I was dreadfully sick, I still had the compulsion to exercise. I knew the other athletes on the team weren’t taking this week off. I kept thinking, What if they learn a harder trick while I’m stuck in this hospital bed? Just thinking about it made my breathing worse, but I had to figure out a way to exercise in bed. Several tests continued to check my lung functions, and the results weren’t good. Every other day I was wheeled down to a room to breathe into a huge fish tank-like machine to check my lung capacity. The oxygen levels in my blood were still below average, and the tests showed lung damage and scar tissue from my asthma.
Another week went by and I was still lying in a hospital bed. The eggshell-white walls and hospital gowns began to drive me crazy. I attempted to do some leg lifts, but got caught by a nurse who yelled at me, saying I was sick in a hospital bed and shouldn’t exercise. I believed exercise would heal me quicker, so I continued the leg lifts after she left the room.
Tara brought me all my missed schoolwork and I did as much as I could, but it was difficult to concentrate. Instead I lay in bed watching daytime TV. Yet another week went by, and I slowly began to recover. The doctors tapered off my nebulizer treatments and promised I could go home in a few days. I was on a chemist’s cocktail of powerful medications when they finally released me from the hospital.
As soon as I got home, I returned to gymnastics. Every move was a struggle; I was extremely out of shape, and I thought my body would never get back to the condition I had previously achieved. To rekindle the fire, I tried to remember the warrior I once was. I thought about all my hard work over the years, trying to reconnectto the boy inside me, the boy who would never quit or give up, and the spark reignited—something telepathically demanded me to keep going. I doubled my workouts and conditioned my body as often as I could. My physical return was much slower than I anticipated, but my soul wouldn’t allow me to quit the fight.
After I was back in competition shape, I thought about Death.
As my spirit began to dim, the lights from my mother’s car rolled across the ceiling like a chariot of horses from the stars. I immediately ran to the door, and when she saw me, she knew I was in bad shape. She seemed angry, not with me or herself, but with my asthma and how frequently I kept getting sick. She couldn’t understand why the hospital kept discharging me when I kept having attacks. I wasn’t embarrassed, as my pride had left and all that remained was my fight for breath. All things mundane and usual were drowned out by the seriousness of my sickness. My mom put me in the car and drove me to my primary care physician. When we got in the examination room he took one look at me and called an ambulance.
I don’t remember what happened next, but when I woke up I was in a room surrounded by machines and nurses. The nurse at my right had a warm smile for me, but had a large needle in her hand; she said she was going to draw blood. I wasn’t afraid of needles, but she was going to draw blood from an artery near my wrist for a blood gas test, an extremely painful procedure where the blood is taken from the radial artery to check the oxygen levels. It felt like a hot poker plunged into my bloodstream. There were multiple injectionsof medications, oxygen tubes up my nose, and a heparin lock. Still, I couldn’t breathe and wasn’t in a safe zone yet, as the constrictions in my lungs continued.
A week went by, but it felt like a month. Separately, my parents came to visit, and my mom brought my teddy bear Oatmeal to keep me company. I was still very weak. For an athlete, being sick or injured is one of the worst things that can happen. We work so hard to be strong and healthy that when we are not at our optimum level we feel “less than.” Even though I was dreadfully sick, I still had the compulsion to exercise. I knew the other athletes on the team weren’t taking this week off. I kept thinking, What if they learn a harder trick while I’m stuck in this hospital bed? Just thinking about it made my breathing worse, but I had to figure out a way to exercise in bed. Several tests continued to check my lung functions, and the results weren’t good. Every other day I was wheeled down to a room to breathe into a huge fish tank-like machine to check my lung capacity. The oxygen levels in my blood were still below average, and the tests showed lung damage and scar tissue from my asthma.
Another week went by and I was still lying in a hospital bed. The eggshell-white walls and hospital gowns began to drive me crazy. I attempted to do some leg lifts, but got caught by a nurse who yelled at me, saying I was sick in a hospital bed and shouldn’t exercise. I believed exercise would heal me quicker, so I continued the leg lifts after she left the room.
Tara brought me all my missed schoolwork and I did as much as I could, but it was difficult to concentrate. Instead I lay in bed watching daytime TV. Yet another week went by, and I slowly began to recover. The doctors tapered off my nebulizer treatments and promised I could go home in a few days. I was on a chemist’s cocktail of powerful medications when they finally released me from the hospital.
As soon as I got home, I returned to gymnastics. Every move was a struggle; I was extremely out of shape, and I thought my body would never get back to the condition I had previously achieved. To rekindle the fire, I tried to remember the warrior I once was. I thought about all my hard work over the years, trying to reconnectto the boy inside me, the boy who would never quit or give up, and the spark reignited—something telepathically demanded me to keep going. I doubled my workouts and conditioned my body as often as I could. My physical return was much slower than I anticipated, but my soul wouldn’t allow me to quit the fight.
After I was back in competition shape, I thought about Death.
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