Category Archives: photography

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Influenza and lung swelling

Influenza is different from a cold virus and different from bacterial pneumonia, because it can cause lung tissue swelling.

Think of the lungs as having a certain amount of air space. Now, think of the walls between the air spaces getting swollen and inflamed: the air space can be cut in half. What is the result?

When the air space is cut down, in half or more, the heart has to work harder. The person may be ok when they are sitting at rest, but when they get up to walk, they cannot take a deeper breath. Their heart rate will rise to make up the difference, to try to get enough oxygen from the decreased lung space to give to the active muscles.

For example, I saw a person last week who had been sick for 5 days. No fever. Her heart rate at rest was 111. Normal is 60 to 100. Her oxygen level was fine at rest. She had also dropped 9 pounds since I had seen her last and she couldn’t afford that. I sent her to the emergency room and she was admitted, with influenza A.

I have seen more people since and taken two off work. Why? Their heart rate, the number of beats in one minute, was under 100 and their oxygen level was fine. But when I had them walk up and down a short hall three times, their heart rates jumped: to 110, 120. I put them off from work, to return in a week. If they rest, the lung swelling will have a chance to go down. If they return to work and activity, it’s like running a marathon all day, heart rate of 120. The lungs won’t heal and they are liable to get a bacterial infection or another viral infection and be hospitalized or die.

I had influenza in the early 2000s. My resting heart rate went from the 60s to 100. When I returned to clinic after a week, I felt like I was dying. I put the pulse ox on my finger. My heart rate standing was 130! I had seen my physician in the hospital that morning and he grabbed a prescription pad and wrote: GO TO BED! He said I was too sick to work and he was right. I went home. It took two months for the swelling to go down and I worried for a while that it never would. I dropped 10 pounds the first week I was sick and it stayed down for six months.

Since the problem in influenza is tissue swelling, albuterol doesn’t work. Albuterol relaxes bronchospasm, lung muscle spasms. Cough medicine doesn’t work either: there is not fluid to cough up. The lungs are like road rash, bruised, swollen, air spaces smaller. Steroids and prednisone don’t work. Antiviral flu medicine helps if you get it within the first 72 hours!

You can check your pulse at home. Count the number of beats in one minute. That is your heart rate. Then get up and walk until you are a little short of breath (or a lot) or your heart is going fast. Then count the rate again. If your heart rate is jumping 20-30 beats faster per minute or if it’s over 100, you need to rest until it is better. Hopefully it will only be a week, and not two months like me!

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relegated

you’ve relegated me to one small box

a place in your life, Sunday morning
not every Sunday, but some Sundays
to work together on the tree house
and talk a little

well, you talk. I am supposed to listen
and give another perspective. I don’t get to
pick the topic.

You don’t answer emails: not the poems,
not the essays. I am not your Facebook friend,
we don’t have dinner like civilized friends
you would not mention my birthday
nor will you take me out on your boat.
Holidays are on ignore. You even agreed
to watch my cat and left her, after one day.

you’ve relegated me to one small box

I climb out and wander the streets, howling

I am unedited, unwashed, unpredictable, unrelegated

howling about you and your treatment of me

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Center

The east and the west are yours, the north and the south are yours.

The center is mine.

I stand in the center, I sit in the center, I sleep in the center.

I move and it moves with me.

There are no doors to close.

I am here and the Beloved is here and the universe is all around me.

I walk in beauty and ugliness, joy and grief, riches and poverty.
I walk on concrete and in trees, indoors and out, up stairs and down.
I walk on land and in seas, below ground and above, in darkness and light.

Now I walk in beauty: beauty before me, beauty behind me, above me and below me.

The center holds: blessing to the Beloved.

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Resilient

We went for a walk last night down town. On the way back, the bell in the fire tower was illuminated and looks magical. The tower was built in 1890 for the town fire bell and has been preserved. Read about it at the Jefferson County Historical Society : http://www.jchsmuseum.org/Resources/Resources-HistoricPreservationBellTower.html

I hope we can come together as a country for health care as this community has for the bell tower….

This is for the Photo Prompt: resilient.

 

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Pandora’s Box

I read this: Was Pandora framed? today and thought, I know I have a Pandora poem….and here it is, from 2011. And another write up, Why the number line freaks me out, that too. When I think of infinity and Pandora’s Box…. it’s worrisome…

Pandora’s Box

Oh, you’d think
It would be empty by now

But I open the box again
I say what I want

And hear “No.”

I sit in want
Old wants
Buried wants
Pressure rising

I know by now
What is happening
I let it rise in me
I do not fight it
I clean the bathroom
Scrub tile and grout
Wants claw inside me
Burst like striking oil
A geyser from within
Black sticky want
Screaming up through the air
Falling everywhere
Filthy, flooding

It will take a while to clean up
this dark matter,
pollutant to poison
or fuel to sustain?

 

I took the photograph yesterday on North Beach. It looks like a popped child’s toy, pink. But it’s not…. it is all over the beach. A seaweed? Something hatching? Nature is a Pandora’s Box as well…. infinitely creative….

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The dead are with me

I am at the lake. There are younger people with me. We go to the graveyard. The earth is soft and loose. There are no markers or stones. We do not need them.

“I can feel the people in the earth.” says one of the younger people.

“Me too!” says another.

“Of course.” I say. I name the people under the earth and introduce them. The young people are amazed. I am surprised that they have never felt the dead. I think the cities and concrete and phones and television and computers: all of these must block the signals. But we never allowed electricity here. The phones don’t work. Candles, aladdin lamps, propane stoves and heat with wood in old cabins. Thin shacks where we hear the wind and water, and tents, lying in the embrace of the earth.

We leave but when we come back, the young start to reach down into the soft earth, arms length. “Did they die young?” one asks. “We want to know more.”

“You must be patient.” I say. “Don’t push the dead.”

Later I return a third time to sit quietly alone with the dead. Dark falls, moonless, overcast, no stars. I stand to return to the cabins and my flashlight dies. I know the paths well, but not the path to the graveyard. I tie up my long skirt and kneel. I feel the ground gently. Yes, I can feel the path. I start to crawl slowly, stopping to feel the packed worn earth. I think of wolves and cougars but none have been here for years. It is not cold enough for exposure. It is just dark and slow. The dead are with me and approve.