Space Walk

Supplemental oxygen. Like the rest of the technological advances and innovations that help keep me alive, I have mixed feelings about it. My lungs have had a difficult time with various treatments, I have several lung mets, and we live at 5,000 feet, which all adds up to slowly deteriorating oxygen capabilities for yours truly. I’ve found myself using it more and more often, and while I’m grateful for the relatively easy fix, there’s also the practical reality that oxygen means being hooked up to tubing and cannulas sticking up your nose. This is especially irritating when you have a cold - which is ironic, because of course it’s when you need a little extra help more than ever! Woe be the oxygen dependent who fails to carry Kleenex in her pocket, is all I’m saying. 

When I’m out and about, I have little O2 concentrators I can take with me. The larger one is called O2D2 and he’s been in the family for a couple of years. The littlest one is Double-O, because she’s super sly and easy to camouflage. I have a tendency to get the tubing wrapped around the gear shift on my car and often find myself yelling at my car’s alert system, which insists that the “passenger” needs a seatbelt. “It’s not a person! It’s my oxygen!” I screech, and then I try to zip out of my parking spot and remind the car who the boss is around here. Not surprisingly, the car often gets the last word by tangling the tubing up in between my feet, under the seatbelt, looped around random levers, or caught in the center console. Sigh. What can you do but laugh, since throwing the oxygen concentrator is NOT an option? 

At home, I have Big. Big offers continuous flow, all the oxygen a girl could ask for, and - this is key - yards and yards of tubing. I can walk all around the second floor of my house - I can even walk down the stairs! - without having to move Big. Big and I chillax a lot. We have a standing date every night at bedtime and Big comes down to visit the main floor many a day. (We both need the change of scenery.) Sometimes, I do get hooked on a drawer pull or someone steps on my tubing tail, which makes my head snap back and leaves me disgruntled or teary-eyed, depending on my mood. 

Sometimes, a coup of sorts occurs while I’m asleep, in which the tubing slips under my pillow and around the cord for my phone charger so I can’t get out of bed in the middle of the night without undergoing a tedious and, to my sleep-blurred brain, somewhat arduous pop quiz. You know those metal puzzles you used to get every Christmas, where you’re supposed to get the ring off of some contraption and your brother can do it in 90 seconds but you just wind up heaving it across the living room when you think you’re alone? It’s like that. But if you hurl anything across the room when you can’t tease out the answer to this puzzle, you will wind up with very sore ears and one befuddled husband, at the very least.  So I fumble around for a while and eventually make my escape, although sometimes I have to scamper away and leave my O2 on the bed while I take care of middle of the night emergency situations. Like getting a bowl of ice cream. 

Overall, though, having oxygen at home is really beneficial. First of all, it’s very good for the skin. Not many people can boast of having an oxygen bar at home. (I’m all about the lux life.)  Second - and I can’t stress this enough - wandering around the house with oxygen tubing trailing after you practically requires you to pretend you’re an astronaut. Sure, astronauts probably don’t have anyone stepping on their tubing while they’re fixing the astronaut version of toast in the kitchen, but it all balances out, because I don’t have to wear a giant fishbowl on my head. 

Both of us can glide out through the doors of our man-made homes and linger, feeling weightless and impossibly small, staring around at the velvety darkness and the cosmos strewn above us like jewels. Wondering what the Universe has in store, never so aware of our fragility and genius as we are right this moment, immeasurably grateful that our lives have brought us to this precarious perch at all. 

 
“You are a child of the Universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” - Desiderata