The land of dread

Frozen oak

Sunset from kitchen window

     We have been having an air inversion for the past week.  Normally, air gets colder as elevation increases, but the opposite has been true. Yesterday it was 28 degrees here in the Willamette River valley, and 58 degrees for the snowshoers up on Mt. Hood.  This morning it is 20 degrees out, and we can barely see to the corner through a thick blanket of frozen ground fog.  The trees and bushes are frosted.
     The frozen fog is laced with toxins, particulates from fuel emissions and wood burning.  Sometimes is smells like the summer days when the smoke from forest fires drifts east to Portland, or like were are in a room with a smoking fireplace. When we don't have to be somewhere, we stay home in order to limit driving.  Sometimes I can pretend it's a snow day and wonder at the beauty.  Other times I get restless.  

Frozen woods

     The bad air makes Judy's breathing much more difficult.  She is  careful about staying indoors.  I walk down the driveway to get the paper and the mail, in order to save the insult to her lungs.
      At Judy's regular pulmonologist's appointment, the news was not good. The capacity of her lungs to use oxygen has gone down 10% in the past six months.   The amount of oxygen the her lungs can pump to her blood now stands just above the level where people need supplemental oxygen with activity.  The young doctor (Donald Sullivan, who likes to be called Sully) says that it's too soon to tell whether this change  is a trend.
     Dr. Sullivan called in the top pulmonologist, who questioned  Judy closely  about her level of everyday activity. What about housework? Just as Sully does, Dr. Barker included me in the dialog, and I gave my observations.  Barker, in an attempt to be precise, I think, asked us awkwardly of we were friends or neighbors or lived together, or?  "We're partners," I said.  "We've lived together for seventeen years."  And I blushed, darn it! "I needed to know," he apologized.  And I reassured him, "No, it's good to ask."  I always come out as matter -of -factly as I can, but blushing sure doesn't help.

Travel Scoot

     For both Judy and me, the latest test numbers have broken through the  respite of denial. Life has gone on, albeit at a much slower pace than before.  Judy has the subset of pulmonary fibrosis where people go down in stair steps rather than in a steep decline.  I am hoping that her downturn is a step leading to a long plateau of the new normal. Visualizing a plateau is my new form of comfort and hope.        
    Judy's  was to seize on the idea of a mobility scooter.  Her research led her to a certain light -weight  model.   We both had dreams of days of exploring and sightseeing with ease, of the Smithsonian and the viewpoints of Yosemite.  After a week, we found someone we knew who had a Travel Scoot.  We went to try it out.  It was light enough for me to lift it into our Prius, and compact enough to fit. But it was wobbly and and slow and uncomfortable, and the owner allowed as how she didn't use it much.  She used her heavy electric scooter more, but mostly she just doesn't go out.  Judy's hopes for the usefulness of a scooter were dashed.  It is awful to be reminded that there is no deus ex machina for her disease.
     Meanwhile, Judy is doing  what she can.  Dr. Sullivan emphasized the importance for Judy's overall health of keeping active.  For the past year, Judy has been swimming three mornings a week.( To me, that's fortitude.  Leave the warm house to jump into a pool?  No way!) She wears a wet suit, but still the warm pool sometimes chills her.   Now she has added walks to the schedule.   With the air inversion, she has been walking in the mall.

Judy in the teddy bear chair

    We have a new chair for her to come home to.   I've been wanting to replace a small loveseat with something more useful.   I finally found it at the furniture consignment shop --an easy chair that rocks and swivels and reclines.  On Saturday morning our good neighbors Janet and Robert got their Toyota 4Runner started.  They took  the loveseat to the consignment store, hauled home the big heavy chair, and carried it into the house.  It's big and brown, made of a deep soft  plush fabric.   It's like sitting in a teddy bear.
     So life goes on, everyday beautiful and restricted in its own way, and we find comfort in the strangest places.