farewell to lungs

This would be more frightening if I had not had it before.

About 4am I wake up and can't breathe.

Actually I'm still breathing but not enough. I have the feeling that I am suffocating. It's horrible but, I've been here before. This time, understanding is quick and clear.

Everything below the skull is controlled by the brain, which in in the skull. Brain and body are connected by messages which travel down the brain stem. Roughly following the spine (going down the spine?)

all this is done automatically, subconsciously, by my brain.

Cancer is blocking the brain stem. Messages are not getting through.

There is a growing failure to communicate

... to the lungs (now

... to the heart (I think it happens

... top anything else (eventually).

I'm not sure how it will feel for the other organs but the lungs are first to go... and I feel suffocated.

Lungs may seem to be automatic but They are not.

They would sit there, doing nothing except that the brain sends a series of orders: breathe in, pause, breathe out, pause, in, pause, out, etc...

Many of those orders are now being lost in the cancerous stem. So my breathing is neither smooth nor regular. I'm not breathing properly. I'm suffocating.

===

What I do is make the messages to the lungs, a little more conscious.

I *consciously* take a deep breath. And another, etc.

The lungs are in working order. They need to be told to work.

I tell the lungs to breathe *deep*, in, out, etc.

I'm no longer suffocating

... automatic breathing kicks in

... long enough for me to relax. To sleep for another hour or more.

Suffocation will return, possibly not for hours. Meanwhile I'm a bit short of breath, otherwise fine.

Until

... I suspect that this loss of lung is what will kill me,

... But not right now :-)

... 

Dr Nick Lethbridge... Churchlands

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