Coming up for Air

I blinked stupidly at the tea scoop in my hand. What am I doing?

“You’re making tea,” Sumie prompted, pointing out the obvious. We were seated on tatami. The bowl and whisk ordered in front of me, ro heating the water, which steamed nicely. The bamboo ladle was in place.

Everything started to go fuzzy around the edges. I had something in my hands. Maybe my silk tea cloth? Maybe the scoop still? What was Sumie saying? I could hear her talking but felt like I was under a thick blanket, unable to understand. I blinked and blinked again, trying to clear my head.

“Mari…daijobudesu-ka?” Are you alright? Sumie asked. I was not daijobu.

I told her I felt really strange and tried to finish preparing tea, but at some point I apologized and asked if I could step outside for air. I was afraid I might lose my lunch in Sumie’s tea room. Maybe it’s worse to toss your cookies in a tea garden, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I staggered outside and tried to breathe deeply and slowly. Back inside I slumped down in the entry way and half passed out. Sumie offered me a pillow and blanket to lie down and I passed out for some time—maybe an hour? Two? My alarm went off to let me know the kids would be home soon. Time to go. Should I be driving? I wondered. But I felt awake, if not totally alert. I drove an hour home with no issues.

Over the next few weeks I went to the doctor a bunch of times and had blood drawn even more times. I ended up in the emergency room unable to breathe or walk upright and had to get a blood transfusion. “How do you feel?” the doc asked around 2am. “Amazing—I am just breathing all the air,” I said. “I just keep breathing in and all this air is just filling up my lungs. It’s great!” He looked confused. “Ok, that’s not what I was expecting, but good.”

I’ve been treated for anemia off and on my whole life. It had now bottomed out to the point my bone marrow didn’t have any iron to make red blood cells, so I wasn’t getting any of the oxygen I was breathing. That explained the heart attack feeling I’d gotten a few times trying to catch the train. “This is how I go—heart attack running up the stairs and missing the train,” I thought one unfortunate day the previous fall as the train left without me and I gasped for air, my heart squeezing painfully.

It didn’t get that bad all at once of course. Little by little over the past few years I felt like the world was slowly darkening and restricting. I had bizarrely strong cravings for frozen raspberries (high in iron, yes, but it was the frozen texture I wanted—PICA it turns out, but it was food, so it didn’t seem that weird? But maybe hiding in the kitchen to scarf down frozen raspberries should have tipped me off something was up? I don’t know, maybe I just really like raspberries?) Everything I enjoyed seemed like too much effort. Bummer, I’m probably depressed, I thought, but I’m too tired to do anything about it.

After the ER, I got a series of iron infusions straight into my vein at a Japanese clinic, and put on some meds to staunch the issue causing the anemia. It’ll take about three months for all your blood cells to turn over, they said, but you should start feeling better soon.

I did start feeling better soon. Much better. But I kept feeling better. Much much much better. I had planned a work trip to Hawaii before I passed out. Everything was finalized but would I be well enough to go? I had my last iron infusion a few days before leaving. I felt like a different person—I could work work work all day, cleaning, painting, meeting with contractors, and I still was able to do two of my favorite nearby lowkey Hawaii hikes—Makapu’u and Pillbox. When I climbed, I just…breathed more. My legs felt like they were moving, not burning and screaming from lack of oxygen. My heart wasn’t stuttering and skipping. I just WALKED UPHILL. Amazing!

Chris deployed the day before school got out—terrible timing. He was scheduled to be gone in March. I honestly don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t been home to take me to the ER. I probably wouldn’t have gone. The night I passed out at tea ceremony Chris was doing some two week exercise so the kids and I hadn’t seen him in a while. I got in bed that night and prayed, “Lord, please don’t let me die in my sleep and have my kids find me in the morning when they realize they’re late to school.” and my first thought in the morning was, “I’m alive! Yeah if I’m at all surprised by that I should go to the doc.”

“I feel like I’m suffocating,” I said to Chris about a million times in our cramped, nonfunctional Japanese kitchen. A laughably small (if I’d felt like laughing, which I did not) amount of counter space, most of which was taken up with drying dishes, which got added to faster than they could dry (it’s humid here and the base only issues dehumidifiers and central air conditioning to people on base). Extremely limited shelf space meant moving three items to get to whatever I needed, then putting everything back. For every tool and ingredient needed for lunch prep, dinner prep, making a cup of tea, whatever. It was too much. I felt like I was underwater and the surface slipping further and further away. I must be depressed, I thought. Get it together. I must be out of shape. Try walking further. I should get together with friends, but thinking about making plans seemed like a lot of work, so I took a nap instead. Dang, I am a good napper lately, I commended myself, probably because I don’t sleep well at night because I wake up all the time with pins and needles in my arms and legs, or unable to breath. Probably allergies—did I forget to take my costco brand claritin? So tired.

Anyway, take your multivitamins. Go to the doctor if you feel like you’re dying. Breathing is amazing. I’d like to keep doing it.