Life with a Symbiont
Never assume anything. Of this I have learned.
In the past several months since I have been using O2, I have had to live as though I had a symbiotic being with me most of the time.
The only time I am free from this symbiont, is when I sleep and in the early mornings (on a good morning that is, only on a good morning). For some reason, I have been blessed with my emphysema, if that’s possible. It seems that just about everyone I know that lives with “oxygen requiring COPD,” has a symbiont like me, but requiring it for 24/7. I have never needed it for sleeping. It seems that everyone else needs it at the very least for sleeping even if they do not need it during the daytime, but they still need it for sleeping. For me, it is different. When I started exchanging information with others, whether in Pulmonary Rehab or in our Better Breathers Club (discussed later), I was astonished to find this out, because I assumed we were all pretty much alike. I had assumed so much that when I saw the looks on the faces of the respiratory therapists at my mention of not using 02 at night, I figured I had better ask someone about it. I mean, maybe I was wrong…. Could that be? Me? WRONG? I do seem to use a lot of air!
I run at 3 litres all the time when I am with my symbiont. Others I know are running at the same or even lower volumes of O2, but they still need it at night. I go through so much that I cannot rely on those cute little teeny tiny tanks, the petite ones that might actually be camouflaged as a purse or as hair spray. No not mine, the way mine looks, I could only camouflage it if I were to wear a weight belt, wet suit (or shark suit), flippers, and be riding around on a boat with a spear gun.
So the very next time my “Air guy” came over, when I mentioned it to him, even he kind of looked at me with a strange look.
So he said, “Let’s look at your paperwork. Let’s see what your prescription reads like.” So I got my original paperwork out and we looked at it. He even mentioned he thought most people had it for 24/7 usage. When we looked at my paper work, there it was, clear as the printed carbon copied font.
My Rx is for 16/7. Hm. 16 hr certainly is not 24/7. My allowance is for 8 hrs and certainly, it is not during the day when I am active. And certainly when I put that pulse oximeter on my finger at night, and read 96-97% (without air) I am doing OK. Even when I wake during the night as I reach out from under the covers (trying to move as little as possible), pushing the rubber button that activates my little unit spilling light into the darkened room, the reading I get when my finger is pushed in, usually runs between 95 and 97.
Of course, my oxygen is not that high when I go to bed. When I turn off the oxygen at the big unit, coil the hose up and put it away then walk into the bedroom, my oxygen saturation drops to about 87, which is certainly a “calling” for O2. But when I sit there in a nonmoving state my saturation climbs right back up to a normal level on its own, and if I happen to do some yoga breathing, it rises quickly. And providing that I don’t have to get up and walk around they stay high all night long. So I have never used O2 to sleep with, like so many of my friends need to do.
So this alleviates me from becoming wrapped up like a hose mummy in bed while I sleep. One of the good things about this fact is that it means I am not mummy wrapped 24/7 because I would be if I required the O2 at night. Luckily for me I only get wrapped up 16 hr per day.
I am the Queen of wrap. I can find a coil in my air hose, like a mosquito can sniff out carbon dioxide, like a drug sniffing dog can scent cocaine, and with slippers on, I can scoop up a coil; faster than a bubble can rise in a glass of Pepsi. I can usually feel the cord go around my ankle so I have adopted a certain leg flip that kicks that coil right off my foot as I walk….or so I think. I swear I can feel it fall off and then I take another step, and there it is wrapped once again around my ankle. Again, I flip my foot, this time with a little purpose involved. Next step, it’s still there! Lifting my foot I try to back my foot out of the coil, and then my slipper falls off, and it is STILL wrapped around my ankle! When I finally do kick the coil off, when trying to get the slipper back on, and I usually picked up that damn coil, again. If I reach down to physically remove the coil when I grab it, the line morphs into a straight line, no coil showing anywhere, but the moment I drop the line and take a step, there it is! It‘s enough to drive a person wild! Then it hits me, it’s a symbiont. I need it, like it needs me.
So I figure that the slippers (scuffs) cause this, and I vow to wear my cross trainers from now on. Nope, my cross trainers not only can find a coil, but while one foot hugs a coil the other foot steps on the hose and then both feet are involved.
I must say that sometimes walking out of the kitchen with a bowl of soup, a spoon and a glass of water, can be my undoing, if not just the bane of my existance.
Someday, someone is going to come home and find me wrapped head to toe in my oxygen hose, my food and water just outside the reach of my fingertips , and my curses will be ringing through the air, loud enough to cause the neighbors’s dogs to howl. My symbiont runs my life.
But I get my revenge when I sleep.
I have freedom, because in my dreams I do not have COPD!
Ha! Take that, you dirty symbiont!
