Thankfulness

It's been all over Facebook and Twitter and even some blogs are doing it, listing the things people are thankful for. I've seen spouses, children and pets listed. I've seen dishwashers, cars and heat listed. I've seen talents, friends and other loved ones listed.
I've been thinking about the list that I see and wonder if there was something deeper to be thankful for.
You see, if a dishwasher or car breaks down, we can either replace it, fix it or do without but our life will go on.
If our spouses, children and pets are no longer with us, we grieve, we cry, we are lost and we hurt beyond belief, but we still wake up the next day and put one step in front of the other and in our pain God is with us. I've seen God bless people with another spouse to love - my FIL was blessed to have 3 women in his life who he loved and treasured.
So as I was thinking about all of this, something happened to me to give me something to be thankful for.

Breathing.

I caught a cold. A simple cold. There are a lot of colds up here and the bug is everywhere so I was bound to get it.  The problem is I have asthma and when the cold hit, it aggravated my asthma and I ended up spending 4 days struggling for air. I went to work for a few hours for 3 days but always had to leave because I was so tired from just breathing. I couldn't sleep well at all because I needed to force myself to breath.
I called my doctor's office and told them that I was in no pain but that breathing was a lot of work. I was sent to Acute Care.

There I got a much needed nebulizing breathing treatment. I was sent home with 3 drugs - Prednisone, Albuteral, and cough syrup with codeine as well as a spacer (pictured above) for the abuteral. I was to use it every 2 hours to continue the breathing treatments until the wheezing stopped. It took 11 treatments every 2 hours and then another 5 every 4 hours before I could breath without thinking about it.

So I continued to struggle to breath. It was exhausting to say the least. No sleeping, feeling the weight of our atmosphere on my chest and just plain fighting for every breath. With each treatment I could feel some relief but not enough to relax and be able to sleep for rest.

It was during this time I learned what I am thankful for - Breathing.
Before this I just breathed without thinking about it. I never thought about gravity pressing against my chest making the movement of my chest harder. Never thought about the muscles needed to both inhale and exhale. Never thought about how much air it took to talk (I didn't have a voice) or cough (still had the cold) or walk up stairs or even sit up to type.  I just did it. I just went to work and did my job. But for the past week I couldn't do anything well at all. Work was hard because talking on the phone took effort, talking to coworkers took way too much effort.
If you can't breath, you cannot do without like the things I mentioned above. You cannot replace the lungs easily and you can only fix them - fast!

So I am thankful for all the men and women who work to develop the medicines that make it possible to breath. I am thankful for all the research that is going on to help future people recover from and prevent asthma. I am thankful for being able to breath. And I am thankful for the lesson I learned. In all things give thanks!!

I am also thankful for a husband who took over everything. He got up and drove August to and from daycare. He did the cooking, cleaning, keeping me warm and doing it all. He has a cold now, thankfully he doesn't has asthma as well.
As I type this however, I still don't have much of a voice....Something that Hubby is thankful for.