Sunday 21st July - My Oxygenated Life

Random observations

Please don't misinterpret this post; it is not a plea for sympathy for loss, but a celebration of life regained.

How a fridge works (I think)

I know now personally, in a way I would never have known before, how refrigerators work. So, if I have got this right, if you have a gas which is compressed under pressure, and then you release that compression, the gas gets cold. 

Which explains why when we are out and about and I am using oxygen at 6 litres per minute my nose becomes extremely cold as the gas is released from the cylinder and into my nose. 

'Free, free at last!' the little molecules cry in delight. 

'Why is my nose getting so bloomin' cold?' I grumble. I shall have to remember to wear a scarf in colder weather.

Fortunately this effect much much less at lower flow rates.

Freedom

There is a new version of freedom in being tethered to an oxygen source. 

Today I enjoyed a shower, without feeling dizzy, breathless and unsafe.

I also cleaned the shower screen (I probably should have increased the flow rate for that, but soon recovered!) and the basin and taps, and brushed my teeth, all without having to be careful of my balance because my oxygen levels were supported. When they fall below 80% I become decidedly wobbly, and start feeling unwell and unsafe. 

AND I polished the surface of a desk in the bedroom that I cleared yesterday, in order to have a comfortable place to write up my diary in the mornings.

Yesterday I coped with walking up a fairly steep slope at Devil's Dyke, admittedly 'in installments'. It wasn't a long slope, but I was aware that the sight of steps and gradients no longer fills me with the same dread and apprehension as it did in the past.   

Pace of Life

Going slowly, with many pauses, means that I have time to look properly. 

Yesterday I watched two young women walking along the path at the edge of Devil's Dyke, talking to each other, walking and talking easily without apparently pausing for breath. 

I wonder if they 'saw' anything? The countryside laid out like a model village, the cricket matches, the variety of different grasses and wildflowers, the little tortoiseshell patterned butterflies? 

They will have had a lovely afternoon together covering the miles; I had a great hour covering the couple of hundred yards or so that we walked.  

Hope

I was talking to a very much older lady at the first or second pulmonary rehab gym session I went to. She had recently been diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis, and was very apprehensive about her future. She was going to be attending the same clinic that I have been going to for decades,

'I'm dreading being on oxygen,' she said, eyeing up my cylinder and cannula.

'All I can say is, I've been lucky, and haven't needed it for nearly twenty-five years, and I've discovered that by the time I needed oxygen, it made things so much easier I'm grateful for it'. Well, I wasn't being exactly truthful about the second part of the statement at the time, but it has become true.

And anyway, she seemed much cheered. 'I'm 83,' she said slowly, beginning to smile... so I guess she was thinking that if her PF progresses as slowly as mine did, she'll be ok until she's 100. I hope so too.