Losing My Ability to Breathe
Somewhere, between diagnosis and deliverance, I forgot how to breathe. I find myself, at odd moments, holding my breath, not in anticipation or fright, but simply because I have forgotten the rhythm of breathing.
I didn’t even know about my loss until I started experiencing horrible, unexplainable pain in the middle of my chest that isn’t a heart problem (checked that), isn’t a nerve problem (checked that too), or even a lung problem (checked the bellows out and they’re fine).
“You’re as healthy as a person half your age,” the cardiologist told me. If that’s true, why does it hurt to breathe or have my heart beat strong and deep? Why does my left side swell up? It hurts to lie down, or stand up? Why does it happen over and over again?
“Your breathing function is normal,” the internist told me. “In fact, your lung capacity is superior.” Than why does it hurt to breathe? Why can’t I take a deep breath without agony? Walking up stairs is a cruel form of torture.
“Have you ever considered acupuncture?” my family practitioner asked me. Really? Alternative therapy? I couldn’t believe a physician was suggestion alternative therapy.
“Well, I do go to a chiropractor and a massage therapist,” I admitted.
“Does it help?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.” I shrugged. “Sometimes it helps the pain go away if I go in early, sometimes it doesn’t. My massage therapist claims that I have incredibly tight muscles on my left side. It takes her an hour to work through the knots.”
A Different Kind of Specialist
“Do you know how to breathe?” my neighbor and friend asked me. She’s a life coach, and helps people with chronic pain—she’s also a person in chronic pain. “I can teach you how to breathe.” I reluctantly agreed to go over to her house after work one evening (after my second job–I much rather would have been in bed).
“It’s called diaphragmatic breathing,” she told me. “Put your hand right below your rib cage and try to push your hand out when you breathe.” I felt silly, but I tried it. “When you breathe shallowly, you decrease your body’s ability handle pain.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” She launched into the technical reasons why shallow breathing keeps a person from processing pain and releasing endorphins that help the body take care of pain. I thanked her and wandered out of her house, hand on stomach, practicing my breathing while thinking of breathing in general.
[shareable]Shallow breathing can decrease a person’s ability to process pain. #caregiver #selfcare[/shareable]
Over the next few weeks, while I waited for my pain to go away, I caught myself not breathing. The computer didn’t load fast enough—I clenched my teeth and my breathing ceased its regular, steady rhythm. Three family members with perfectly good hands and arms and backs failed to put their own dishes in the dishwasher—how hard can it be to bend slightly and put a dish in the dishwasher? I got cut off on the highway—have they stopped giving driving tests?! Ooops! My teeth were clenched and I had been holding my breath for who-knows-how-long.
Caregiver, Beware Your Breathing
Somewhere, between diagnosis and deliverance, I had started holding my breath—in fright, in anticipation of the next piece of bad news, in mental pain and agony, in emotional stress. No one ever warned me that a side effect of all that stress would be a loss of breathing. In fact, no one warned me about any of the side effects of a cancer diagnosis. Slowly, every so slowly, I’m putting a name on them and dealing with them. For now, I’ll start with breathing lessons.
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