Asthma

Colby is twelve when I am diagnosed with asthma. It is he, in fact, who diagnoses me. He has had asthma since he was three and somehow knows that my series of worsening coughs is asthma, rather than allergies.

Colby also has (had) asthma. From the time he is three until he is nine, Colby has several stays on the children's floor of Vanderbilt Hospital. This is before the new children's hospital is built. His first asthma episode comes on the last day of my old job, the one I resign from so I can open my own business. Colby is three and a half and I want to do this so I can be a room mother, go on his school field trips, and take him to ball practices.

On this afternoon his babysitter calls to say I should come early. Colby is sick. I am desperately trying to wind things up at the old job, but I get there as soon as I can. The doctor, not his usual physician, asks why I'd waited so long before bringing him in with an asthma attack. I reply that my son doesn't have asthma. But apparently now he does.

We are on the children's floor for five days. Twice, hospital volunteers stay with Colby while I go back to our house to feed our two dogs, and our cat and horse. Colby has breathing treatments every four hours so we are up all the time. The only place for me to sleep is in an armchair. I am so very, very tired.

On the second day, representatives from the bank come to Colby's room so I can sign the loan papers for the new business. On the third day I come down with a sinus infection. On the fourth day I am in the hospital parking lot, coming back from feeding the animals when, exhausted, I slip and fall, breaking my instep. I hobble up to Colby's room and spend the rest of the afternoon and all night in the chair with my foot propped up on the arm. How ironic, I think, that I am here in the hospital and cannot go to the emergency room; there is no one to watch Colby. The next day, as soon as they release Colby, we limp down to the emergency room where x-rays confirm the break. I am on crutches for the next six weeks. None of the later stays were that dramatic, but combined, they gave Colby a sixth sense about asthma.

After I am diagnosed, Colby is (was) always the first to recognize my impending episodes. He could tell just by looking at me, or after few seconds on the phone, and would ask if I'd thought about checking my air flow or using an inhaler. Now, without Colby's instincts, I find myself in the throws of a bad asthma episode. Not bad enough to seek out a physician, yet. But maybe. Maybe soon. Without Colby I cannot tell until I am already wheezing that asthma is rearing it's ugly head again. His early intervention stopped most of my episodes and they rarely needed professional medical attention.

Every day I find another way to miss Colby and today this is added to the list. This, now, is added to his humor, intelligence, eclectic taste, quirks, talent, kindness, conversation, and a host of other things. Today I read a heartfelt letter from a mom who lost her son forty years ago. Her heart is still breaking, as is mine.

Health

I haven't been taking care of myself. For years I adhered to a special diet and I have not been doing that since Colby passed. It has been hard enough just to remember to buy groceries, much less the correct groceries. Then eating them is an entirely different matter. It's not that I don't want to eat correctly, it's that I have not been able to focus enough to do so.

Eating right for me is different than for most people. I have a chronic illness that is controlled by diet and I have a genetic predisposition to heart issues. I have had close family members pass away at very early ages from massive heart attacks. My blood pressure is very low, which is good, but my triglycerides are somewhat high, which is not so good.

This week I had a bad asthma attack. Knowing that for me this is a symptom of other things going on, I had blood pulled. The results were not terrible, but they were not good either. Compared to other people, I still have very good eating habits. I rarely eat either fast food or "junk." But balancing the dietary needs of my illness along with the needs of keeping my triglycerides down is a delicate matter. Colby was always great about reminding me, based on what I'd already eaten that day, to eat a little more protein, or something with little salt. This is just one of the many areas of my life that is empty without Colby. Today, after a dietary review my doctor said, "It's almost as if you want to die."

The words stun me. I wonder if, subconsciously, that is what is happening. Or, is it that life is still so overwhelming? I do not know, and add it to my growing list of things to ponder. I do know that Colby would want me to take care of myself. I have many things yet to do, and one of them is ensuring that Colby and the things he stood for, the things that were important to him, will never be forgotten. To do that I have to be healthy. To be healthy, I have to closely monitor what I eat.

My doctor suggests joining sparkpeople.com. It's a free site where you can track your food intake and it automatically gives you the nutritional breakdowns. You can customize just about everything and it also gives you video demos of suggested exercises and fitness plans. I signed on and we will see. So far it has been a real eye-opener. I have already learned that even though I thought I was doing well in my specialized diet before Colby passed, I really wasn't. While I won't do this for me, I will do it for Colby. For his memory. For his beliefs. Colby was too good a person to go unremembered, and the world will be a better place if Colby's ideas on the environment, animal welfare, and human dignity are embraced by many.

Ponderings

A counselor, a physician, and I go over Colby's medical records and I compare them to what I know of other family members who had schizophrenia. They are strikingly, scarily similar. I had always felt badly that my genes gave Colby his asthma, something that is seen on my side of the family, including me, although I didn't develop any signs of it until I was 40. Colby has asthma troubles from the time he was three. Now I feel worse that my genes also gave him schizophrenia.

The three of us discuss the generational jump that this mental illness often presents. The jumping from aunt to niece, grandfather to granddaughter, although most in my family who had schizophrenia did not have kids. I wonder if I'd had other children if they, too, would have been affected. Both the counselor and the doctor tell me that maybe, but most likely not.

Schizophrenia comes in many forms they tell me. Colby's took the form of paranoia, panic attacks, refusal to bathe, depression, anxiety, and, at times, being obsessive about certain subjects. He could also feel threatened by people he knew well. I tell them that my yard guy who has been cutting my grass every other Wednesday for fifteen years, and who Colby used to work for, told me he came to the door last spring and Colby met him with a sword, drawn, panicky that "they" were out for revenge. He didn't ask who "they" were, and I didn't know about the incident until after Colby passed.

I balance this information in my mind with the fun-loving, smiling, intelligent, kind, caring, talented son I always knew, although I on many occasions saw him turn in an instant from that person to someone who was very angry, fearful, paranoid. How much the drugs played into that I will never know, except I do know the behavior began long before the drugs.

Sometimes I think if only I had gotten him to a doctor who "got" him, who could have treated him effectively. Schizophrenia is often treatable. But then there are no guarantees, and maybe Colby's life played out just as it was supposed to. Neither of these thoughts make me feel any better.

I am not sure what this information means. Certainly it is more to digest, to think about. Certainly it means that wherever Colby is now, he is no longer tormented, scared, or afraid. He is at peace.

Bracelets

I have a bug. A little bug to be sure, but it is enough to keep me from feeling completely well. This is the time of year that Colby always got sick. Just after his birthday. I remember countless first or second weeks in October spent in the hospital with Colby struggling to breathe. When Colby was born his lungs collapsed and he spent eight days in intensive care. After that we had issues with asthma. Upper respiratory infections. His chest laboring to rise and fall.

In my daily perusal of Colby's stuff, today I find most of his hospital bracelets. Each time he was admitted he was issued one, and each one brings back a memory. That's the year he had the boy who was receiving treatment for cancer for a roommate. That year I broke my foot in the hospital parking lot. There, that's the first one, the year that was the scariest, before we knew what childhood asthma was all about.

I am surprised he kept the bracelets, although I shouldn't be. By now we all know that Colby kept everything. But I am glad he saved them. They help me remember. Good times and scary times. Fear and relief. I put the bracelets back in the box he kept them in and put them with other items I know I will save. For a while. I know I can't keep it all, don't want to keep it all, that I will have to at some point revisit this growing "Save" pile and fine tune it. Refine it. Whittle it down. But for now the bracelets bring mostly good memories and it makes me feel good to know they are there, safe on a shelf in the room that is still, for a little while longer, Colby's.