The last few months I worked at the VA in Temple, I worked for a pulmonologist. I spent some mornings helping him put cameras down people’s throats into their lungs to snip out bits of tissue (it was always cancer), and most of the day evaluating people with sleep problems to see if they needed CPAP machines. CPAP stands for constant positive airway pressure. A CPAP machine is basically a vacuum cleaner on reverse that blows a “gentle” amount of air into your nose and mouth to keep your airway open while you sleep. If you snore really badly and are tired all the time, ask your healthcare provider.

Two afternoons a week a ran the COPD clinic, where I was the sole judge of whether old men got provided with oxygen tanks. The problem is that everyone feels better with oxygen, even you and I would. Since oxygen and supplies are expensive, and a little hazardous, the government was picky about who got it. Mostly, it gave oxygen to people who could walk, but got short of breath real fast, in the hopes that it gave mobile people more ability to get around and care for themselves, and out of the VA. So after chatting with them, and an exam, I would hook them up to an oxygen sensor, and we would go for a stroll around the office hallway square. I’d watch their oxygen level for drops as we walked. If it went low enough, they qualified for oxygen; if it didn’t, they got nothing. 

Tonight, I feel like those old smokers: just taking one tired step after another, losing steam. There’s no particular reason. Work isn’t any better or worse than usual. Hell, I just had a long weekend vacation, where I slept and biked, and hiked, and ran, and even got to see my parents for the first time in six months. Of course, the world’s on fire (is that still literally true in California? Is it over, or did the news just move on to the political nightmare we’re all in?), but that’s both not new. Knock on wood, we’re all healthy here, how’re you? 

So let me look for that little spurt of oxygen to keep on steppin’… Where is it tonight? 

• It’s in the taste of the Chips-ahoy cookies Michele bought for our weekend getaway snacks. They taste like childhood dipped in milk.
• It’s in the fact that my cat, who I unwittingly raised like a dog, will sit still while I put an LED lighted collar around her before I take her outside for a few minutes every night, but who even now, is mewling plaintively at my elbow to go back outside again.
• It’s in the box of old pictures behind me, filled with more memories.