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dcnovice -> DC Update: Under Pressure (9/25/2014 5:06:20 PM)
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September 25, 2014
Under Pressure
Dear Ones ---
More years ago than I care to count, I learned in grammar school that matter is never destroyed; it simply takes different forms. The same, I’m starting to think, is true of trouble. The latest outcropping is my growing difficulty with hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy, which is meant to be nudging the last bit of my last wound to finally heal, dammit.
In theory, HBO treatment is simple: You lie down. You watch a movie. You breathe. A breeze, no? The trick is, this all takes place inside a sealed pressurized tank. You can see one at http://www.perrybaromedical.com/sigma-34-hyperbaric-chamber.html. I believe that’s the model used at Georgetown.
Once the big steel door closes, there’s no opening it till the chamber has been safely depressurized. Altogether an ordinary “dive” takes two hours. For reasons not clear to me, the “descent” heats the tank up—sometimes unpleasantly, sometimes unbearably. I do not do heat well, especially in a place from which there’s no escape.
That lack of escape seems to weigh more and more heavily on me. At first, it annoyed me; now it troubles me. I find it harder and harder to muster the will and focus to say, “I don’t care if I don’t like it. I’m staying here.” I wake up hours before a dive and dread the thought of it. Three times now, I’ve needed to abort dives in progress, and even that required waiting 15-20 minutes (I think) for depressurization. The last time I was at Georgetown, I couldn’t bring myself even to enter the chamber. Sedatives didn’t help.
Part of the problem, I’ve discovered, is that, for a seemingly sedentary guy, I like to move a lot. I get up, sit down, read, walk around a bit, nosh, lie down, check texts, check emails, and so forth. My restlessness has spiked over the past year because changing positions can relieve pain. Unfortunately, that same agitation is the opposite of what one needs for a successful HBO session.
Another factor, I’m pretty sure, is exhaustion. My life has pretty much been a nonstop medical melodrama for 21 months now. No vacation; no real recharging. The grit, or whatever it was, that got me through radiation, chemo, neurosurgery, and two massive abdominal operations is long gone. All I want to do now is sleep, sleep, sleep. As Katharine Hepburn said in The Lion in Winter, “How about eternal peace? Now there’s a thought.”
Then there’s the minor matter of earning a living. I am slated to return to work part-time on Monday, an arrangement worked out before my HBO travails had intensified. The plan is for me to go to treatment in the morning, then head off to the office. I may need to work with the HBO folks to fine-tune things. A break the first few days back at work might be in order to help me focus on the job. Such a hiatus is “clinically acceptable,” I’m told.
You know from my past epistles that inspiration comes to me in odd places. Today’s much-needed note of hope came from a song that the legendary actress Gertrude Lawrence, whose autobiography I’m reading, sang in a revue early in her career.
There’s a little green patch at the top of the hill,
Climb, boys, climb.
And it’s there we can rest at our pleasure and will,
Climb, boys, climb.
Though the way be dreary and your bones be weary,
It will all come right in time.
There’s a little green patch at the top of the hill,
Climb, boys, climb.
Thank you all, girls as well as boys, for climbing with me! I hope we can rest together soon atop this tall, steep hill.
Cheers,
DC
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