Barely Breathing, Part I

Hi everyone!

After a long day, I'm going to go slow and post one of my favorite articles from the past. It's called "Barely Breathing." I'm going to do it in stages, though -- it's a long sucker.

BARELY BREATHING, PART I

“Oh my G-d, mom, I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”

I had collapsed under a pine tree at Cal State Fullerton, on a clear day in late January. I was talking to my mother on my cell phone.

“Reina, stop being so hysterical. Just come on home.”

That was me, the great medical hysteric. But I felt like I was dying. The pain in my chest had become excruciating.

Picking myself up had to be the hardest thing. I went to my apartment, grabbed my Vicodin and cell phone charger, and with only a backpack, I went down to my car and started driving home; it was like driving drunk without a single drop of alcohol.

The next 36 hours weren’t even there. I don’t remember anything, except perching myself on the couch, holding slightly onto my chest and only moving when I had to go to the bathroom. At 10 o’clock Wednesday night, when I coughed so hard that something came up, that something was blood. I may be a medical hysteric, but even I knew this wasn’t a good sign.

At noon the next day, I was in Dr. Gonzalez’s office. He was a good-looking, older Latin man, the kind you were sure the ladies swooned about when he was young.

I was paler than a ghost as he studied my left leg. “Your leg is warm, not to mention extraordinarily swollen.”

“Yes,” I whispered. I couldn’t talk that loud. “It’s been that way since I was in the walking cast.”

After the tests, he looked at my mother. “Don’t take her home. Don’t take her anywhere. Take her straight to the hospital. I’m 90 percent sure that it’s a blood clot.”

He should stand corrected: It was five blood clots, three of which had lodged themselves in my right lung, which go by the medical term of pulmonary embolisms. By 5 p.m., I was lying on a hospital bed, while nurses kept poking me with needles, desperately trying to save my life.

Meanwhile, six months before, I had started a new life. I moved away from my parents’ house in Thousand Oaks to Fullerton, a place where the only people I knew were my cousins 20 minutes south. But it didn’t take too long for me to pick up friends.

Each friend played his or her own significant role in my life, and took on a very strong meaning for me. My classes were amazing, and I felt like I was in a place that fit perfectly for me. Orange County had its own culture and sound, which I drank in. My friends from back home didn’t really come to visit, but the fact was that now I was living two very separate lives: one in Orange County and one at my parents’ house.

When winter break approached, I returned home and spent time with local friends. The last day I really felt fine before all of this, I was with my friend Michelle at a mall in the Valley. I bought shoes, and she bought some clothes. We had a good time. I really wish that I cherished that day more, because what would happen afterwards would change my life.

The day after, I had pain in my ankle. That pain led to a walking cast, due to the readjustment of bones in my foot (due to flat feet). That walking cast led to a very swollen leg, followed by food poisoning, and the never-ending pain in my chest, to the point where I couldn’t even laugh.

At 5 a.m. on the Tuesday before my hospital visit, I went into the E.R. in Fullerton, because my chest pain became so bad I couldn’t even lie down. They misdiagnosed me with bronchitis and a chest wall strain, for which the prescription was an antibiotic and Vicodin. I took a winter class, and I remember storming out of the classroom, because I couldn’t breathe, as if going outside would help it. Needless to say, the rest came to be a trying experience in my life.

I lay down gently on the hospital bed after I was taken for tests, and little did I know it would be a while before they let me get up again. I was the youngest person on the ward as the nurses moved my bed into a room. They moved me next to the window, where I could see a hill that set the background for Thousand Oaks. There was nothing more I wanted to do than run up that hill and curse at G-d for putting me into this situation.

That night, I couldn’t breathe, and the nurse stuck an oxygen tube up my nose. My mom was sitting there, and for every night I was terrified I wouldn’t wake up again, this was the night where I tried to stay awake in fear of it, but the vicodin overpowered my will. I wanted to just cry in terror of what I had become.

Of course, everyone found out almost immediately, and the calls came pouring in. The most memorable always came from Martha Wendy. She was my mom’s best friend since they were teenagers. She called almost every day to check up on me.

“Babalee,” she said. “You know, you’ve got to be more assertive. If you want to get what you want, you have to stand up and say, ‘I need this.’”

“Uh, Wendy, I’m kind of not in the state to do that,” I replied. “And I’m not allowed to stand, anyway.”

“Oh well. At least do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“When they bring you some Vicodin, save some for me, okay, honey?”

Parts Two and Three to come later this week!