breathe in breathe out

I swear I have been here before, this breathlessness. I remember it vividly, not from a dream, but from the first time. I remember how I felt like I was drowning and dying for months before I had my first lung transplant almost six years ago. It has hit me again, how it feels to concentrate on each breath, to feel it coming into your lungs, only to feel that it can't go everywhere you want - the scar tissue inside from acute and chronic rejection is stopping it. I didn't think I would be here again. Call it naive, call it wishful thinking, whatever you'd like. The first time I had to think I could get ten years from a set of transplanted lungs to mentally get myself to do it. I am at six years, and again I am staring the question in the face: are you going to allow yourself to go through the process again, and get new, I guess re re transplanted lungs? The question is more difficult this time, the situation is much harder this time, because I know what I will have to go through, it's not a surprise. And I know what it is to never think about breathing, so being breathless is even more shocking and less tolerable now. I know how terrifying and painful the process is. I know how hard it is, unlike anything else. And I don't have my life support with me anymore, my mom - who I lost to breast cancer about 2 years ago. What would she be thinking right now, if she were watching me? Would she want me to get new lungs? Would she understand if I didn't want to go through it again? Would she call me crazy for even thinking twice about it? I don't know. But I need an outlet, and more than anything I will need support, I will need a trillion times more support than last time, to even get near what I got from my mother. And I want to keep you updated as I go through this process, or as I don't go through the process....so here you can find my daily thoughts about again being in this place that I call a limbo - between living and dying, and maybe you will see some fun things too, like my failed cooking expeditions....

xo