Sigh of Relief

So I'm on the treadmill and for 3 days in a row I've had chest pain after 5 mins. Pulled a muscle? Or dying? I finish my 20 mins anyway. Life is too busy to go to the hospital, so pulled a muscle wins.

The next day I have to do Lilly's field trip, so I skip the treadmill (why have pain and remember something wrong?) and pack her lunch. I walk her to school and get a little out of breath, just like I did last night reading to her in bed. I had to keep sitting up because I couldn't breathe. I hope I'm not dying, my mantra.

Barry and I get in the van to go to the Getty and meet Lilly's class, and when we get off the freeway and go down the winding pre-Getty road, I suddenly feel a wave of ice cold go from my chest down my whole body. Like the flu. B's voice gets far away, like in a tunnel. Nothing seems to matter, or what did seem close and important seems like a luxury - complaining about everyday things - a total lucky thing to be able to do. Right now, something terrible is happening, and I'm trapped inside it, in this body.

As we go into the dark open mouth of the Getty parking garage, I tell Barry, I think we have to leave. I don't feel right. We are going farther and farther down into the car dungeon. I don't want to die here. But I have Lilly's lunch. So I have to give it to her so she won't starve. Then right to the hospital.

I get dizzy walking there, going half my normal Run Everywhere speed. No wonder my body is falling apart. I've been on emergency mode for 13 years. Burning the candle at every end and then buying some more ends so I can burn those too and is that even enough?? There's no quarterly review and pay raise, so I just keep going madly until you get things like chest pain at the Getty.

B runs to find the bus and the class and I sit at the top of the stairs feeling a wash of fear and ice cold go right down my arms to the elbows. My lips are numb. My teeth feel like wood. I sing Itsy Bitsy Spider to myself to calm down and the security guard slash guy who makes sure people get off Getty property before they die comes over and talks to me about my symptoms and I tell him I might need an ambulance. I want to tell him that's very unlike me.

B dashes back and we head to the car, with Dave the guard guiding us. He runs up the ramp in front of our car, runs up and around, up and around, stopping any car that will get in our way, making sure we get out quickly. At the gate, he looks in the car, waves us through and fixes me with a determined look. "Be well," he says.

Barry and I then try to get on the 405 which has every ramp closed as guys in orange perform the most intricate freeway bypass surgery in history.. We keep angling into smaller and smaller coned off lanes and I think this is where I go? I'm going to die trying to get on the freeway??

Then we're going and we just want to make it to Burbank to get to our hospital. We're both privately panicking but trying to remain calm, and when we finally make it in the back entrance, like the way the cafeteria workers drive in to get to work, I tell B, you know nothing's gonna happen but if anything happens I want you to know you're the best thing in my whole life. Then he jumps out of the car to get a guy with a wheelchair, and we wait for the guy to come out, and we're hugging and crying because I can't breathe and my heart hurts and my arms are numb and that's a pretty bad sign.

They wheel me in and hook me up and I'm not having a heart attack. Tell that to the 300 pound lady on my chest, I say.

After hours of waiting and a chest xray, a doc comes in who looks like he doesn't know what he's doing and says "Oh yeah, you had a sponatanous pheumothorax." "Is that a dinosaur?" I say. It's a partially collapsed lung. "Not too much, 15 to 20%." If this is nothing, how do people do it with an entire lung collapsed? That must feel like sunbathing while flattened by a piano. He mentions chest tube, CT scan and staying overnight. All these are not words like brownies, you look wonderful and Hawaiian vacation.

A guy who looks like a blonde stoner/surfer Pauly Shore comes in and says "You ever used crutches??" waving them at me. He has the wrong room (he looks like that happens to him alot). We hear him go next door and say "You ever used crutches??" My dad is there, entertaining me with his tallness and his directing skills (demanding excellent care) and Barry brings food because they put a nitro patch on my chest and it's giving me a ripping headache. I say I can't leave my family home without me, who's going to run my set, I tell my dad? He says sometimes you have to leave it to an A.D. The set will run smoothly. He says you have a producer. Let him run things.

Crutches surfer guy comes back to wheel me to my new room and likes my farm boots and talks about how he's about to move to Washington state, 300 acres owned by his wife's family, and build a duck blind on one of the ponds. They have a 3000 pound bull named Omar who was bottle fed and follows you around like a gigantic dog. He shows me a picture of Omar and his wife, which looks like a tiny smiling lady hugging a massive furry minivan. I want to move to there.

I spend many hours watching "Little House on the Prairie," and the nurse brings me food I didn't have to make. In fact, there is nothing to do here but lay down. Why have I not been doing this always? I say goodnight to the kids on the phone, and they sound really weird because I never talk to them on the phone, they are always 3 to 5 feet away from me. At 11 at night they wheel me down to the CT scan and it's awkward to make conversation with guys whose job it is to wheel people down in elevators, I should remember I'm cargo and I don't have to tap dance for them, but there is that pressure. Then the CT scan I'm on a tray that goes into a circle where it takes pictures and the disembodied voice says "Hold your breath. Okay, breathe normal." I want to tell him, this is the job you do every day. You have to say these words every hour. Say "normally." It's breathe "normally." But I leave him and his bad grammar, for the rest of his life.

I get another chest xray in the early morning and then nothing happens until like 2 pm when the doctor comes who is Chinese with an English accent (really bad casting) and tells me that it's really nothing? Just a smull bleb on the lung that popped? (this is how he talks, like up at the ends) There is air on the outside of the cavity? Pressing on the lung? And that is the pain? You must not fly for 6 months? No scuba diving? You must rest until a week from now, come to the clinic? For a chest xray? We will make sure it is not getting bigger, but staying the same or smaller? The body will reabsorb the air? It might take a few weeks? He says I can do my normal activities but nothing strenuous. I stare at him. ALL my activities are strenuous. In fact I never sit down. Is that on the chart?

When the kids come in, I haven't seen them in 24 hours. The first time I'd ever been away from Lilly overnight in her almost 7 years. They all look like giant strangers to me. The first thing I think is Oh My God, I can't possibly do this anymore. Who can do this? This job is impossible. I had enough distance to see that, indeed, how are both my lungs not crushed - this is huge responsibility, growing these gorgeous and wonderful creatures. It's all so tenuous. They are alive. They respond to light. I grow and tend living creatures.

Lilly lays on the bed, and I give them the chips and little cereal box I saved them from breakfast and lunch, and they are happy. Emma made homemade cookies, her first time ever, while I was gone, and put a tablespoon of salt instead of a teaspoon and I love that she made cookies, is a baker, I did something right! There they are, mine again.

I get to leave, and my dad helps me pack up and B takes the kids to gymnastics and I get wheeled out and wait for my dad's car, and everything looks wide and open and airy - the world is a huge place, there is plenty enough air for my lungs, they will heal up. If only I get to be here, just a little while longer. To ride in the car next to my dad. To talk about the universe. To see Lilly get taller. To see that puppy at home. To watch Nathan crack jokes. To have Barry always be there. To eat Emma's wonderful salty pretzel chocolate cookies. They're seriously the best cookies I ever tasted.