I
can't. (I have asthma.) That's the way you had to turn down other kids. A simple,
direct negative.
Nope. Can't do it.
You never wanted to give a reason or explanation, because that might sound like whining, and they'd never let you live it down.
But you always knew the reason, were never able to forget it. So you whispered it to yourself as you watched them go off on some wild adventure.
(It's because I have asthma.)
"Hey, Morris, let's go into the woods and try to find that old mine shaft your cousin told us about."
I can't.
(I have asthma.)
"The snow's just perfect — let's go sledding."
I can't.
(I have asthma.)
So went my childhood.
Of course, I always wanted to go off with them, even if I could feel a bad attack just around the corner, but my mother made me tell them no. Being overly protective, I always thought. In fact, she was just being a mother. If she hadn't been so restrictive, there undoubtedly would have been many more missed school days, even more frequent trips to the hospital.
A lot of my childhood was spent in solitude. I learned the pleasures of reading and the escape that was possible when pen was put to paper. The person I am today — both the writer and the quiet man who would rather be home than at a party — can be traced back to the asthma.
My father took me to Lexington, Ky., several times, the closest place to Perry County, Ky., where there was a specialist. They gave me allergy tests, about 100 of them, to find out what pushed my asthma button. Animal fur — no pets for me. Ragweed and goldenrod — the state flower, for goodness' sake. Feathers — bring out the foam-rubber pillows.
Then, when I was 12, we moved to Fort Wayne and away from a lot of things I was allergic to. Gradually, my symptoms decreased. The shots my mother gave me went from two a week to one a week to one every other month. By the time I was 17, the shots stopped altogether, and I went into the "I can because I don't have asthma!" phase of my life.
(Curiously, this was also about the time I started smoking. Only a teen-ager could reason that, hey, I've just escaped a life-threatening chronic breathing ailment, think I'll start sucking smoke down my lungs! Idiot.)
I went to college — and could run a mile. I went into the Army, and could endure a forced march with a full pack. I went overseas, back to college, into the world of work. And I jogged and played tennis and racquetball and softball and went camping and took long hikes. Whenever I wanted.
The thoughts of asthma receded. The days of wheezing. The nights of gasping. The shots.
Oh, there was a reminder now and then.
When I worked in Michigan City, I had a friend named Jerry Pearson, with whom I had much in common. We were both the products of Appalachia. We were both athletically challenged. We both had overprotective parents. We both loved junk food and science fiction. And we had both suffered from childhood asthma. We swapped stories of coping with the affliction — the outings cut short, the trips to the hospital.
"And I never told the other kids why I couldn't do stuff," he said once.
(Because you had asthma.)
I think Jerry both admired me and envied me for having left the asthma behind. He still suffered from it. We'd all be sitting in a restaurant, and somebody would tell a funny story, and Jerry would start laughing — then explode with so much coughing and gasping we were afraid he'd collapse on the spot. Stress always added to an episode — and deadline stress is part of a reporter's life. Jerry, a reporter, carried an inhaler with him always.
Then we left Michigan City. Jerry went to a bigger newspaper in northwest Indiana — part of his career plan to become the black Mike Royko, find a city he could make his own through a daily newspaper column.
And I came to Fort Wayne . . . to a father dying of black lung, the coal miner's disease. The last 10 years of his life were a slow descent, one stage into the next as his breath got harder and harder to catch. That last year, when my brother and I visited him, we had to go stand on the back porch and smoke our cigarettes, because of the oxygen tank in the house. The irony wasn't lost on us.
Except for one jarring moment, I hadn't thought much of any of that — from the wheezing childhood to my father's last days — in 15 years. Or at least I didn't dwell on it. I just went about my everyday adult business — one step at a time, one breath after the next.
Then, one day this January, I went to bed with a scratchy throat and feeling lightheaded. I woke up the next morning — and just could not breathe. My mom and sister were on the phone with me off and on all morning. "I'll . . . be . . . fine," I said between wheezes the last time they called. Lucky for me, they didn't believe me. They pulled up to the house as I was trying to get the car started to drive myself to the hospital. My sister drove me.
I was admitted to the emergency room, stabilized and treated. They kept me in the hospital for two days, testing, testing, testing. Was it pneumonia? An infection? Both?
It was asthma.
That hateful, breath-stealing beast had been lurking in me all these years, silent but ready to pounce. Was this a one-time recurrence or something I'm going to have to deal with forever? Hard to say, I was told. You'll just have to take it one day at a time.
So I do. I go at it, one step at a time and one breath after another. I have an inhaler, a small-dose steroid I use as a preventive twice a day. I cut down on my smoking a little more each week, confident I can finally quit this time.
And I try not to react too harshly whenever anybody says, "You must feel lucky — it's only asthma."
Only asthma.
And, oh, yes, that "jarring moment:" It was three years ago. I got a call from somebody I'd worked with in Michigan City, about Jerry.
Jerry had been hired by a newspaper in New Jersey, a job he was nervous but also excited about. He got to the city on the weekend, checked into a motel so he'd be fresh first thing Monday morning. And called his overly protective parents in Tennessee. And got into bed. And had a severe asthma attack probably made worse by anxiety. And died.
All alone, in a motel room in New Jersey.
So, you see, I'd like to just move on and not obsess about this. I truly would.
