The mucous collects in my voice box and sometimes cuts off the airflow completely. The grey area between good and bad is a tricky place. Your reflex reaction is to swallow and clear it, problem is, my throat muscles are just strong enough to cause trouble, but not actually moving anything in the direction that it needs to go. Mary has only a couple of tools to effectively deal with this, being the oral suction machine and a cough assist machine. Time is of the essence.

In regards to my last post, there’s a reasonable amount of truth in it at the time of it’s writing, but there is also a certain amount of bullshit, not intended, you just don’t know. When things finally get happening, all that ‘wisdom’ turns to mush. Your contemplative philosophy, mixed with four and half cups of cash, get mixed in a large binder prepared by a lawyer, blended thoroughly and baked at three-hundred and fifty, might as well be floating in space somewhere in another galaxy, when your heart is pounding, you are already significantly behind on air, not getting any at the time, and no clear time line on when it will get restored. A golden lining on this dark description is that I have a lot of faith in my wife. If it were to not go well at some future time, it won’t be for lack of trying. That’s something that actually is mentally helpful at such a moment.

Given the problems of the night before, coupled with going downhill during the day, we both thought that getting through this coming night would be extremely high risk, in fact, I might have bet against it. Mary was in the exact same place as I was.

It wasn’t what I would have expected. We sat out on our patio on a beautiful evening, more quietly than usual. There just wasn’t that much to say. Of course, we could’ve filled the time with medical talk, but that’s not a life we enjoy. In fact, we’re rather tired of that.

So much is said about “my life passed before my eyes,” both in literature and in everyday tales that one feels needs an extra exclamation point, one is led to believe that our thoughts would be large and illuminating, consisting of serious topics, philosophical and deep, but the evening was surprisingly ordinary. It wasn’t happy, nor was it all that sad. It felt rather hollow, actually. At that hour, what was to be said or done? I appreciate nature, but what was there to learn or investigate at this moment? After picking some tomatoes, Mary breaks the silence with “I’m going to miss you handsome little bugger”. I actually like unvarnished and true feelings. It brings a couple of tears and I reply with something of a similar nature, but that doesn’t last long. We get a late evening antibiotic pickup from the pharmacy, thanks to my brother, Steve. That night, was difficult trying to keep breathing without the sticky stuff getting me, but we got through it and the feaver is minimal, and the mucous in my voice box is more movable.