Broken Breaths :(

3rd Jan,2001

At Home

It was around 2am when I suddenly woke up. I felt a certain twinge of pain in my chest. I t didn't took me way long to figure out that the cold has again knocked me over. Still, I never thought that this night is going to be the longest night of my life if ever I gonna make it till dawn.

Guys, I suffer from Asthma, a non-deadly disease that makes every second of your life ,worth dying. Under attack, It just feels like someone out of nowhere suddenly looms in front of you and tries to choke you down with a pillow or strangle you to death with a wire or a rope.

So as usual as ever before, I tried to ignore the pain and closed my eyes to sleep. Deep inside ,my intuition told me that something is terribly wrong. After around 10 min, in sleep, I felt that my breaths are becoming more convulsive. I woke up and as soon as I open my eyelids, a gush of prolong and racking cough supervened. Felt like my chest has been crucified and soon my arteries gonna fly off from the chasm in my lungs.

I sat over the quilt. Tried to distract my attention from the perennial cough chain but cough failed to cease. In fact, it became more intense, more tormenting and worst of all, more louder. I didn’t want to wake my Mom n Dad up so in order to suppress the sound of my vexatious coughing; I put some handkerchiefs inside my mouth. I saw the clock, it was still not 3. I started searching for Corex, a cough syrup that had always subdued my pain in these crisis times, I checked out every drawer, slided it out with utmost precision so that no one wakes up. Eventually, when I found the bottle, I was enormously relieved but that elation was short-lived as I noticed further that only few drops are remaining. I drank it, though almost sure that this minuscule quantity won’t do any good to me. Same happened. In fact worst, because of the handkerchiefs inside my mouth, normal air entry was hampered as a result of which my breathing rate shot up.

Yet again I went back to bed, trying to sleep. Laying down straight over my bed was not possible as that invited protracted coughing. So what I did was, just sat over the bed, put some pillows over my lap till the cushion reached my chin level and thereafter placed my head over it. I closed my eyes forcefully, intoning “I have to sleep” but just...nothing worked. Though sitting straight made coughing rather sporadic but the real problem came when I realized, for the 1^st time, that I am not able to respire in a proper manner.

Well, when this happens, I generally go for SEROFLO inhaler. My life saver. Throwing away the handkerchiefs from my mouth, I opened the cap, thrust it inside and in haste, started pressing the knob in an errant nonchalant way. Darn it, what came out was just few puffs of plain air. My bungling way of using it made it inoperative.Knob went loose and hence of no use.

Trust me guys, at that moment I literally froze. Adrenaline rush spouted through my veins. I panicked. The last resort has failed. Plus the handkerchiefs that were earlier inside my mouth were inadvertently responsible for the clock ticking against my favor. I gaped my mouth wide open to inhale as much air as possible but lungs revolted. I was breathing but nothing came inside as if there is vacuum all around. Losing the battle, I rushed out to the window, yanked it open and tried to absorb all the air outside. I was somewhat fainting, that what happens if the air supply to the heart is meager.

When I turned back, with my vision almost blurred and me almost dropping down, I saw my MOM, she looked aberrant; horrified eyes, almost trembling, dumb and obtuse; she took some time to regain her senses about the pandemonium that I was going through. She quickly brought the spare inhaler and pumped it inside me, 1 stroke, then 2, 3, 4...every puff comfort is beyond words. Just imagine how you gonna feel if you are being strangled to death and then when you think that its almost over for you now, the grip is loosened and you feel the air going back to your lungs. Guys, that was the Moment. And the "almost dying fish got the much needed water" is all what I can say.

Mom still didn’t speak out a single word. Staring at me,stunned She came and hugged me , and I just relaxed myself in her lap. Breathing back to normal. finally!

PS: Last night, history repeated itself.