Читать книгу ALCHEMIES OF THE HEART - David Dorian - Страница 7

Shards of Glass

I’m prone to a pulmonary illness. My airways become easily inflamed. Extra mucus is produced inside the bronchi, which hinders respiration. Airborne agents trigger the lining of the bronchi. Acute asthma attacks require emergency response. Symptoms are alleviated with the inhalation of pharmaceutical chemicals which open the bronchi. Thanks to these devices, I can perform my duties, which require focused attention and vigilance. Inhalers save lives but do not heal. There is no cure provided by Western medicine.

All my life had been a single relentless attempt to flee an unremitting malaise: suffocation. For many years, I had to submit to the whims and commands of an uncertain health. It is impossible to enter a dialogue with a physical illness. There is blindness and obstinacy to pain. I had to endure its monologue, sustain its cruelty, submit to its tyranny, and with the support of analgesics, survive its assault on my humanity. It was a losing war interrupted from time to time by a precarious truce.

But the cough persisted in spite of medications and treatments from pulmonologists. Something alien and evil was blocking the airways, and the cough was an attempt to dislodge that irritant. Each sickness sends us a summons disguised as a question.

There is a psychogenic theory I find inspirational. It postulates a return to the airless conditions of the womb where oxygen is provided to the embryo through the mother’s blood, not through the lungs. In the months of gestation, the lungs are undeveloped and primitive. Breathlessness is associated, therefore, with prenatal existence. It reestablishes that fusion with the mother. The human fetal larva is a sea creature. Is asthma a nostalgic longing for that amphibian aquatic state? During a flare-up, I literally drown in my own pulmonary mucus. It is a submersion in the liquid realm of bodily fluids and secretions. Back to the amniotic sea, therefore. Is it a latent wish to return to the mineral brine inside my mother’s womb? It is a hypothesis of great mystical beauty. My imagination allows me to adorn and embellish reality.

I fabricate theories and axioms to entertain myself. It gives a colorful meaning to the enigmatic chemistry that rules our life.