1. Asthma
“Extreme Unction” they called it.
I was in 4th grade of elementary school when I became so sick with pneumonia that I was hospitalized with a fever of 107 degrees.
My parents were with me when a priest came to my hospital bed and performed the sacrament that was often referred to as “The Last Rite.”
I remember telling my classmate, Audrey, at a later time, that I hadn’t really been scared of dying.
I just wanted to get better, and “liked the prayers he said.”
“Allergy-induced Asthma.”
That was the diagnosis my parents were given when I was six months old.
Treatment in the 1930’s was to keep me still and quiet, away from everything I was allergic to.
My early childhood memories are of dreaded hospitalizations, isolating oxygen tents, painful shots, and lonely time spent at windows watching others playing outside.
Wheezing became a familiar sound.
I often thought I heard voices in the next room or downstairs from my bedroom, but it was actually my own wheezing.
If I laughed too hard, walked too fast, got too cold or too hot, became excited about anything (especially holidays), caught a cold, inhaled too much secondary smoke, or inhaled certain fragrances, I had an asthma attack.
I still recall sitting on a large rocking chair on our front porch many summer afternoons, with my shoulders, ribs, and back hurting from labored breathing. My siblings and the neighborhood children knew I wasn’t much of a conversationalist most of the time and just waved to me as I sat there longing to play with them. My mother often slept at the foot of my bed at night, “just in case.” The radio became a good friend as I listened to the shows of the 40’s: Fibber McGee and Molly, Arthur Godfrey, Kate Smith, The Shadow, and the actors on “True Story,” were my bedroom guests.
I loved school but missed much of it during primary education years, due to illness. The teachers made sure my work was sent home and returned when finished, and I did quite well passing classes that way. By the time I entered junior high school, I was healthy enough to attend school most of the time and take occasional bike rides with my friends. There were still bouts of pneumonia and asthma attacks, but I was able to enjoy many school functions. I went to school dances and found out how much fun dancing could be. At the same time, I was learning the warning signs of asthma and how to avoid overexertion.
I learned to be a good listener. My grandmother and Sunday school nuns taught me how to offer up illness through prayer, and how to accept disappointment when illness prevented me from participating in life’s events. To this day, illness presents the opportunity to “offer it up” for those people I love. It also makes pain more bearable.
Although I loved playing basketball in 8th grade, I got sick so often that the doctor had me excused from all physical education for the rest of my school years. I learned, though, how to walk long distances without having an asthma attack, so walking became my physical activity. I learned, also, to have Plan B’s ready whenever Plan A’s got cancelled by illness. Medical treatment of asthma gradually advanced and improved as I entered adult life.
The man I married learned to live with my limitations for our 21 years of marriage before his death. Although our family physician had told me when I was a teenager that I would probably not be able to bear children because of asthma, I went on to joyfully give birth to nine babies.
Eventually, however, I was so sick that our elderly doctor in New York advised, “You know, Pat, I’ve never suggested to anyone in all my years of practice, to take the family and move away for health reasons. You are the first one I’m advising that you do just that if you want to see your children grow up.” We decided to move to Colorado after reading that it was a good place for people who suffer from respiratory problems, especially asthma.
My husband and I sold our house and business, left family, friends, and everything familiar when we moved to the mountains of Colorado. We purchased 10 acres of beautiful mountain property by the Ute Pass, bordering national forest, and facing Pikes Peak.
My health improved immediately! My husband was as happy as I that I could finally stop taking pills and shots, needing only the occasional use of an inhaler. All 10 of us lived in a large tent while we built our house; and my health, our marriage, our business, and our hopes and dreams were strengthened.
Then my husband suddenly died of complications from an appendectomy. Following his death, while searching for ways to improve my health as a single Mom, with children ranging in age from 5 to 20, I joined a fitness club and began working out and feeling better than ever. At the age of 40, I was hiking, lifting weights, playing softball with the kids, and participating in physical activities I had previously avoided. The more I did, the stronger I grew. Prescribed preventative inhalers introduced me to a new world where I could finally let go of fears associated with being asthmatic, and strive to conquer new challenges.
Reflecting now, I know I learned compassion from having asthma.
I was led to my first volunteer work also: At the hospital where I had so often been cared for in the Children’s Ward, I had seen the adjoining Home for Crippled and Orphaned Children where mentally and physically disabled children resided.
The nurses and nuns caring for me would tell me about children from all over the world living there. At the age of 14, I walked in and asked if I could help. They knew me and my limitations from asthma, but allowed me to comfort the children, to help bathe and feed them, and just be with them. A crippled and dwarfed woman resided there, who had lived there for her entire life. It was she who taught me how to iron as I helped with the children’s laundry. I was given an early awareness of ministry.
I believe that asthma blessed me with learning to be a good listener, and consequently to see God in the stillness, in the dark, in meditation; and to find peace in the silence. My heart-to-heart conversations with God, His Blessed Mother, and the Saints, began as a small sick child as I learned that prayer could be my faithful companion.
My early desire to be a writer came from being asthmatic. My love of writing was born in first grade when I discovered I could easily express myself through writing, where I didn’t have to worry about breathlessness. The poem I wrote that year was published in the city newspaper, a seed of encouragement. As I learned to read I realized that I loved the sentences more than the stories. Words fascinated me! That fascination continues today as I find that writing letters often solves loneliness as I “talk” to friends and relatives on paper. Writing is also a source of comfort to me.
Asthma brought limits to my life, but only physical limits. It doesn’t limit my spirit, my praying, or my loving. Limitless have been my hopes and prayers, my dreams. It is because of the times when I had difficulty breathing, that I so cherish each breath I take. From that same need came my realization that it is really the breath of God, which keeps me going, blowing profusely on my spirit and giving me strength.
The A-frame Frank and Pat built in Colorado in 1974