這篇assignment是作者以自己經歷表達積極心態重要性
 

直到幾年前，我還常常認為當我在對某些人抱怨某些瑣碎的事情時，這種行為是很愚蠢的。他們可能對我講：“至少你還擁有健康的身體”好像這應該至少還算點安慰。我猜我應該一直是健康的，除此之外，在十八歲的時候，你沒必要真的去考慮或者計劃什么時候展望你的未來。這有學校，美好的生活，社會生活，還有工作——沒有留給不良健康的余地，真的。我一直認為我的身體在某個后臺的地方運作，直到我到了神奇的四十歲。什么時候會失敗，當我變老時，我會經歷所有在我身上發生的糟糕的事情。我一直努力地對我自己說，我還擁有健康這是多么的幸運。此時我感覺生活變得完美了。那是在圣誕節來臨的前幾個禮拜，我作為大一新生在大學的第一年，我有一個超棒的男朋友，一份還算可以接受的工作，只有兩次考試，我整個圣誕節都在購物，在我腦海里最后一件事就是深呼吸，直到十二月份白雪皚皚的晚上。
 

Learning to Breathe 
 

Up until a few years ago, I used to think it was silly when I would complain to someone about something trivial and they would say to me, “At least you have your health”--as if that were supposed to be some kind of consolation. I guess I thought I’d always be healthy and besides, at eighteen years old, you don’t really consider or plan around it when looking at your future. There’s school, love life, social life, and work—no room for bad health, really. I had always just considered my health to be somewhere ticking along in the background, until I reached the magical age of forty, when it would totally fail and I would start to experience all those awful things that happen to you when you get “old”. I’m trying to say that I pretty much took my health for granted. My life felt perfect at the time. It was a few weeks before Christmas of my freshman yearin college. I had a wonderful boyfriend, tolerable job, only two finals left to take, and all of my Christmas shopping done. Breathing was pretty much the last thing on my mind…until that snowy night in December. 

 

It was a night that started like any other night. My department store job at Sears left much to be desired, but the pay was alright. As expected for an evening in a mall during the Christmas season, the store was like a madhouse and the customers behaved as though they should be committed to one. Around seven p.m., I got a bit overwhelmed with all the festivities, so I found a quiet corner in the back of my department, sat down in the floor, and began to fold sweaters. I folded for what seemed like forever. As I kept leaning over to place sweaters on the display, I found it was becoming harder and harder to move my right arm. I mostly ignored this, chalking it up to zero sleep and long hours at work, until I happened to look up and see that all the clothing in the store had become one big blur. Wow, I thought to myself, I must be really tired. I blinked and decided to take a break. #p#分頁標題#e#

 

I walked into the deserted break room and grabbed a Pepsi from the drink machine. My hope was that my blood sugar was simply getting a little low and that the sugar in the Pepsi would help bring it back up. I sat and studied the top of my Pepsi can and wondered if I should call my mom. My head ached and pain shot down my right arm. Was it just my imagination, or was it becoming harder to breathe by the minute? Was this tightness in my chest due to my nerves? I could not remember ever feeling so light-headed in my life. I struggled to my feet and walked slowly back out to my department. The next few minutes were a blur. I remember the looks of concern that my coworkers gave me as I walked by. I tried to say that I was just really tired, but my words came out as a mumble. I returned to my quiet sweater corner and sat back down in the floor. I put my hand out to start folding again, but my entire right arm had gone numb. What was happening to me? Terror and exhaustion gripped me at the same time, and I simply leaned over and laid my head in my hands. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see my manager standing there. I asked what it would take for her to allow me to go home early. A few minutes later, I was making my way through the snowy, cold night to my car. 

 

I trudged through the inch or so of snow and ice that covered the parking lot and sat down heavily in the car. Sharp pain speared the right side of my chest almost constantly. My mind had reached a sort of dream-like state now, which I later found out was caused by the lack of oxygen reaching my brain. I stared at the clock in my car and waited for the numbers to come into focus—8:30. I grabbed my cell phone and called my house. Busy. I called my boyfriend’s house. Voicemail. I felt a sob rising in my throat. I knew it would be nearly impossible for me to drive myself home. I could barely make out the lines on the parking lot and couldn’t even use my right arm, much less navigate the slick and steep roads to my house. I breathed in as deeply as possible and I could see my breath in my cold little Honda as I screamed aloud in agony. I started the car and Christmas with the Rat Pack blared through my speakers. All right, I said to myself, let’s do this.

 

I don’t remember how I made it home that night but I did, and as I stepped through the front door of my house, I collapsed into my mom’s arms. She quickly pulled me to the couch and started to pull off my coat because I was sweating feverishly, despite outside temperatures in the single digits. She kept asking me what was wrong, but all I could coherently tell her was that we should go to a doctor. I remember clearly saying that something was really very wrong. I was terrified. The pain in my chest had become unbearable. My dad carried me to the car and my mom started to drive to the emergency room at Holston Valley Hospital. For most of that car ride, we were very quiet. I stared at my gloved fingers in my lap. I occasionally looked up to see where we were, but the passing scenery made me dizzy and even more nauseous. We sat in silence, scared and worried. #p#分頁標題#e#

 

Mom and I waited in the ER waiting room for about an hour with the rest of the hacking sneezing sick people. I tried hard to focus my eyes on the Psychology book I had in my lap but the words swam; my final exam was the next morning. Then, when we were finally called back, we waited another hour in an examination room. The ER doctor breezed in, we explained my symptoms, and he quickly dismissed my condition as “the onset of pneumonia.” He left the room to write me a prescription and I looked at my mom. She looked so relieved and I didn’t want to say that I knew it wasn’t pneumonia. So, I kept my mouth shut; in fact, I could hardly breathe. We both stared at the door until it opened and the doctor came in again. He said that, while he was almost certain I had pneumonia, he wanted to do one more thing, a chest X-ray, just in case. I had the X-ray, came back in the exam room and lay down on the table. Everything in the room took on a warm sleepy glow. I was close to passing out from the lack of oxygen circulating in my body. 

 

The next few hours were a whirlwind of confusion. Three very panicky nurses rushed into the room, drawing me from my daze, and insisted I get into a wheelchair. They pushed me to a curtained room in the ER, where they positioned me in a bed and put an oxygen mask over my face. I was very disoriented and kept taking off the mask and asking what was going on and telling everyone I had to go home to study for my finals. They told me to try not to talk and a few minutes later, a doctor walked in and dropped the bad news on my mom and me. My right lung was severely collapsed. “Spontaneous pneumothorax” is the medical name for it, and The Lung Association defines it as “a collection of air or gas in the chest that causes the lung to collapse in the absence of a traumatic injury to the chest or lung.” This condition affects 8,000 to 9,000 people in the United States each year, most often young, tall and thin men. I didn’t understand at all what was going on and soon I had an IV in my hand and drugs pumping through me—then I understood even less. Words like “chest tube” and “oxygen saturation” floated above my head, between my mom and the doctors and surgeons. I drifted off into fitful sleep. 

 

I spent that night in the hospital emergency room because the hospital didn’t have enough regular beds for all the patients. I lay awake and listened to the people moaning or crying in the next curtained rooms over. My mom finished talking with the doctors and making phone calls and came to lie down beside me. She stared at me for a very long time, tears rimming her eyes, and then she spoke. She began to tell me that the top part of my lung had erupted in several places and it had caused my lung to collapse. I was only using about 20% of that lung and relying on my left one almost completely. It was the worst spontaneous pneumothorax that my surgeons had ever seen. They would wait overnight to see if it would reinflate itself, but chances were slim. They would most likely have to operate. This operation, called thoracoscopy, was one of the most painful and delicate surgeries that a person could have. The hospital stay and recovery period were longer than that of a triple bypass patient. In short, the surgeons would have to enter my ribcage through three incisions in my right side. Using a chest tube and a telescope to see inside, they would then insert a kind of medicated cotton swab that would roughen the linings of my lung. When those linings healed they would scar together with my chest wall and my lung could never collapse again. The chest tube would stay in for three or four days to help re-inflate the lung. I absorbed this news very slowly and rolled over to focus my eyes on the ceiling. I felt my throat start to close, but this time, it was fear. For the first time in my eighteen years, I feared for my life. #p#分頁標題#e#

 

The drugs prevent me from remembering too much of my hospital stay, which is probably a good thing. My lung never re-inflated itself and we decided that I would have the surgery the next day. Visitors floated in and out that day, offering hugs, kisses, tears, and flowers. My mom and I watched TV and talked a lot. That night, they moved us up to a real room, and we giggled like two sisters as we tried to go to sleep. She would mock-seriously tell me how much trouble I was and how sorry she was that she had to miss work to stay with me. I think she giggled mostly to keep from having a nervous breakdown; I know I giggled mostly because of the drugs. The next morning, I woke up and waited to be taken in. I smiled giddily at all the nurses and they remarked on what a brave patient I was. I didn’t see that I had any other choice. Life had handed this bum deal to me and I could either take it like a woman or like a child. They wheeled me down to surgery and the anesthesiologist came over to put me to sleep. The last thing I remember is feeling the chill of the operating room as they rolled me in. 

 

I slowly opened my eyes. A nurse was standing over me and she offered me ice chips. I opened my mouth to decline but all that came out was a croak. There had been a tube down my throat for the entire four-hour surgery and it was so dry that I couldn’t speak. I took the ice chips. Two nurses wheeled me out of recovery after a while and I saw a crowd of my family and friends waiting in front of my room. When I saw them, I started to cry because I was so happy to see familiar faces. They came to my bed and said things I can’t remember now but I do distinctly remember that my 80-year-old grandfather came up to me and patted my cheek. I sobbed and grasped his hand and he quickly turned away and left the room. The only time I’ve ever seen him cry… 

 

The next few days were pure hell. I didn’t eat and I only slept because of the morphine pump hooked up to me. When I was finally able to move, I was still attached to four machines, which had to move with me no matter where I went. A simple trip to the bathroom took half an hour. I had three large holes in the side of my ribcage, one that still had a thick chest tube running out of it. Tears rolled constantly from my eyes because I was totally helpless. I had always been fiercely independent but now I could do nothing for myself. My emotions were in turmoil. I felt guilty because I was such an inconvenience to my family, angry because this rare condition had chosen to afflict me, depressed because I was so dependent on everyone else. I wanted to die. After eight days in the hospital, I got to go home and start the long process of recovery. 

 

That was three years ago. Since then I have had my left lung collapse twice. I had the same major surgery on it this past January. Although it doesn’t sound like much, I have lost about one quarter of the total capacity of my lungs as a result of the surgeries. Every day, I get a little stronger. I have learned as a result of these experiences that you can never afford to take your health for granted. I cherish every day that I can wake up and fill my lungs with air, pain-free. I now know how much my friends and family truly love me, and I am so grateful for the way they took care of me. I can count on them and they can certainly count on me if they ever need me. Though it sounds cliché, now I really try to live every day to its fullest. Each day is another opportunity to learn to breathe again.