Evicting the Monster Within

Five weeks ago, a monster had squatted in prime real estate—my lungs.   Its tentacles snaked through the tunnels of my bronchioles and alveoli and claimed the better part of my breathing.  A week after it took up its residence, its fangs grabbed hold of my larynx.  I tried to breathe.  I tried to cough.  Instead my eyes bugged out as I eked out a guttural roar.

The first day I lost my voice, I stayed home.  I walked my son Sebastian to the door to wish him a good day at school.  Instead of words, more growls came out.

Sebastian placed his hands on his hips, puffed out his chest and shouted, “No, Mommy!  Stop it!”

I raised my palms upwards and asked, “Waaarrrt?”  Why was he yelling, I wondered.

“You [are] a monster, Mommy! Aaarrggghhh!”  Then he ran outside with his dad and never looked back that morning.

I regained my voice a few days later, but  the green-slime monster with the hairy, yellow arms decided to stay.  When a five-day pack of antibiotics evicted the squatter from both lobes of my lungs, it left behind junk that has plagued me since.  My pulmonologist diagnosed me with post-infection reactive airways.

What does it mean?  My airways are irritated, and this causes me to cough continuously.  It takes the wind out of me.  I am left lethargic and uninspired.  Moreover, my chest and abdomen hurt from the constant coughing.  I struggle to complete a full day of work.  I can barely cook or play with my son.  And I have little energy to write.   So, the doctor recommended I take a daily cocktail of inhalers, antihistamines and, my least favorite, cough syrup—with codeine.

I’d been resisting taking the powerful potion meant to relax my lungs.  I was afraid that I would never wake up, if Sebastian needed me.  I even feared turning into a junkie that cruised down pharmacy aisles and then spending the rest of my son’s life in and out of rehab.  Was Tussinex going to be my gateway drug?  Why were there no natural, alternative remedies for my cough?  I thought about my apartment in Oakton turning into a seedy opium den.  I scoured the internet for another solution to my coughing.  I would not go down this path of iniquity.  Clearly, my imagination was a melodramatic monster worse than the bacteria that had invaded my body.  So I resisted the opiate.

But one evening, as my son and I were reading Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” I started hacking away–like  a lawn mower that needed gas.  My son placed a hand over my chest and patted the area above my airways.

“Mommy, you coughing,” he noted. I could hear the tinge of concern in his tiny voice.  “Spiderman help you.  I try, ok?”

I nodded my head in reply, unable to even mutter any words to comfort him.  He wanted to be my hero, and I knew he felt helpless as he stared at me with eyebrows clenched together as another attack seized my chest.  Sebastian waited until my coughing subsided.  He stood up and kissed my cheek.  “Mommy, you see Doctor.  You have monster inside.”

“You’re right, Sebastian.”  The next day, I went to see my pulmonologist again.   He took x-rays of my chest and checked my breathing with a spirometer.  I was indeed fine.  I was still suffering from a terrible bout of asthma.

One thing you should know about me is that I am a hypochondriac.  When Sebastian was born, I drove my pediatrician crazy with questions and suppositions. Did he meet his milestones?  Why wasn’t he growing faster?  Did he have a hearing problem?  I convinced my husband of the latter.  When Sebastian was a few weeks old, he and I would go into his room and start clapping right by his ear to see if he would respond to sound.  He didn’t, but then we found out that he had not reached the age when he was supposed to attend to noise.

When I turn that neurosis towards myself, I start having anxiety attacks, which trigger further breathing problems.   When my doctor, who examined my tests, dismissed my worries with his diagnosis of “plain, old asthma”, I blanched. While the number of deaths due to asthma is low, I would hate to be one of its statistics.  I pointed this out to Dr. M-.   Having known me for over a decade, he simply patted my hand.

It’s hard not to love my doctor.  He reminds me of cross between one of the Marx brothers and Albert Einstein.  His hands are thick, coarse and warm; his mustache is even thicker, coarser, overgrown and gray.  Every time I see him, he wears the same outfit—a dark green cable sweater, khaki pants and Birkenstock sandals.

“Take your cough medicine,” he advised, and before I could argue, he added, “and you won’t become addicted.”

When I’m in his office, I forget I’m 36 years old.  I swung my legs over the exam table and twirled my hair as I answered his question and expected a lollipop at the end of the visit instead of a probable bill.

“Yes, Dr. M-, but…”

“Are you pregnant?”

“No,” I pouted.

“All right then, you have nothing to worry about but your own fears.  Just take it.  You don’t want to scare your son with that coughing.”

I bowed my head and conceded he was right.  That evening, I stared the monster in its eyes .  It stood on its hind legs and “roared its terrible roar, and gnashed its terrible teeth” as if to scare me.  But I quelled it with a few teaspoonful of berry tasting syrup.  Hmmmm….it was delicious, and the effect was pretty quick.  So that was what Elysium tasted like.

Later, as Sebastian and I read his books, he asked, “Mommy, you see Doctor?”

“Yes, my baby.   He told me to drink medicine.”

Sebastian scrambled off the bed and ran to the other room.  He came back holding headphones, which he placed on his head.  Then, he took the end of the cord, and he placed it against my chest.

“Sebastian,” I asked, “what are you doing?”

“I [am] a doctor, Mommy.  I listen to you.”  He pressed his ear and the cord of the headphones to my lungs.  I took a deep breath, and pressed his small, round head against me.  What a wonder it was to hold my son and marvel at the power of his imagination.

“Mommy!”  He shot up.  “You’re better!  No more monster.”

Indeed the my coughing receded that evening, only to return the next morning as I breathed in the cool fall air.  But at least, thanks to the cough syrup, I slept deeply that night with my son in my arms.

My coughing has since abated, but has not completely disappeared.  It returns when I’m agitated or in situations when it calls for silence, like my staff meeting at work.  Sigh.  I still take my medicine, but have weaned myself off of it.  The haze of the codeine and the vivid dreams it induced made me think of Rabelais, Verlaine and Poe, all of who created masterpieces under the fog of absinthe or laudanum.  As a result, we are now graced with brilliant works of literature and fantastic stories that defy commonplace imagination and understanding.  I understand the power and pull of such chemically-induced creativity, but I much prefer the colorful, vibrant reality of my days with my son and my husband.  I’m so happy I’m back on the road to recovery and can write again.