Breath

Today, my 2nd week at my new job with a hospice organization, I went on a ride along with an RN to do an assessment of a patient referred by a doctor to be a potential patient with hospice. If you aren't aware, people with less than one year of life expectancy can utilize the services of hospice. I have experience with hospice. In 1987 my mother used hospice to die the most comfortable, dignified, peaceful path I've ever seen. It was then I realized that there are two things we all must do, without choice: be born and die. We have literally NO choice about how we are born: in a birthing center, under water, in the backseat of a car that didn't leave for the hospital on time, as a C-section, etc. However, if we know our bodies are giving out, then we CAN make a choice to die in our homes or even in a facility where we are supported and cared for. The quality of life, at the end of life, should be the best possible and hospice is an expert in facilitating that. I can go on and on about hospice, but it was this patient that is on my mind tonight.

He's alone. He's 81. We asked him where his family was. "Down the road" he said, at Northside Cemetary. He's the last living survivor of a family. A family line will end with him. I don't really recall ever seeing that before. He has COPD. He's on oxygen and it's hard for him to breath. Literally, every breath takes work. He was sitting in his recliner. Hands tightly holding the arms like many do when their airplane is just taking off. He's getting tired. He's alone. The home was hot and he had even covered the t.v. with a cloth. How does he spend his days? He said that walking from the table in the kitchen to his chair (less than 10 feet) exhausted him.

He just sits.

Breathing all day long. Breathing all night long.

His list of meds was overwhelming.

He had an episode of hallucinations when he accidentally mixed his drugs where he saw things spinning around him and things in his room and bed that terrified him and while he knows they were hallucinations he is still so afraid.

This wasn't a weak man in his life. But now his life is boiled down to breathing.

I promised myself to pray for him and I know that hospice visits by nurses, doctors, aides, chaplains, social workers, drivers, companions, volunteers, etc will improve the quality of his life immensely. He now has a number he can call 24 hours a day and reach a live person for anything. Pretty awesome for him.

As we sat quietly in his living room while the nurse silently wrote her notes, his breathing was loud. Each breath in and each breath out was labored and seemed to travel from beginning to end down a road too laborious for someone in his condition. The only other sound was the oxygen machine intermittently spraying oxygen into his nose piece. I listened for him to react in relief to that spray...I did not hear it. I wanted to hear him find some relief - maybe even in part for me to feel a little relief from watching him. His suffering is significant. He found no relief. Just breath after breath after breath. The tension of his efforts was palpable in his home. His breathing was purposeful and hard work. It required him to consider each and every effort for breath. He is wearing out. He signed a DNRO (Do Not Resuscitate Order) because he's ready to die. He's literally tired of breathing.

And when I left, I left thinking about breath.

Breath is precious and is necessary for speaking, for resting, for working, for loving, for relationship, for eating, for living...breath is the cornerstone. And I take it for granted. The miracle of my body taking in breath and transforming it into all that I need down to a cellular level and then disposing of the waste....and then doing it all over again. It's miraculous all that occurs!

Pretty amazing - and unless I sit and think about it I don't even think about...and if i DO think about it, I get it all out of sync. I know that meditating is a healthy exercise and its on my 2010 list of things to begin to learn....but I go back to just the purest miracle of each breath in and out and how dependent we are on it and how important it is and how we have so little control over it.

And so I remind myself to find the simplest of life and name it Precious and enjoy the gift of it's existence. I apologize to God for the trivial beauties that I have run over, and through, for so many years. I want to discover the Whovilles in my days that I have trampled. I want each moment, each one that stands for a solitary breath, to matter and help me breath out the waste that I have treasured and claim the beauty that I have missed.

I honor that gentleman's efforts to breath and respect his journey. I will pray for him and that God will have mercy on his days and comfort him at night.

Again, I learn from someone who maybe feels like they have nothing left to teach.

Nothing is wasted. Not even one single breath.