I thought I understood...
Aug. 15th, 2008 01:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_rose99Mother used to say that the most difficult thing about sleeping in an iron lung was "Your father adjusting to sleeping without me."
I always knew that Mother being alive was a miracle. There was a rather ugly ring in her jewelry box that she explained as, "My mother and father gave that to me when they visited me in the hospital when I was 10, during the worst of the polio. I found out later that they had been told to come to the hospital because I was unlikely to last more than a day or two."
Mom and Dad were in their early 20s when they got married, like us. My mother was in her early thirties when she had me. A few years later she started having trouble breathing while she slept. She would just sort of... stop breathing. She would describe it as, "Much more traumatic than it sounds. Your body wakes you up because it has been without air for so long." I imagine it feels kinda like when the lifeguard FINALLY pulls you out after you have pretty much given up fighting back to the surface... only without the water. Mother said it was exhausting. She felt tired all of the time.
So they gave her an iron lung. I vaguely remember the large metal intrusion into our home, and my parents suddenly sleeping in a different room. My mother described it to me later as, "Wonderful! I suddenly had so much energy!" But "It was really difficult for your father."
She was about the age I am now. They had been married and sleeping together for as long as we have.
Yeah. I think I finally understand why it was so tough on my father.
I always knew that Mother being alive was a miracle. There was a rather ugly ring in her jewelry box that she explained as, "My mother and father gave that to me when they visited me in the hospital when I was 10, during the worst of the polio. I found out later that they had been told to come to the hospital because I was unlikely to last more than a day or two."
Mom and Dad were in their early 20s when they got married, like us. My mother was in her early thirties when she had me. A few years later she started having trouble breathing while she slept. She would just sort of... stop breathing. She would describe it as, "Much more traumatic than it sounds. Your body wakes you up because it has been without air for so long." I imagine it feels kinda like when the lifeguard FINALLY pulls you out after you have pretty much given up fighting back to the surface... only without the water. Mother said it was exhausting. She felt tired all of the time.
So they gave her an iron lung. I vaguely remember the large metal intrusion into our home, and my parents suddenly sleeping in a different room. My mother described it to me later as, "Wonderful! I suddenly had so much energy!" But "It was really difficult for your father."
She was about the age I am now. They had been married and sleeping together for as long as we have.
Yeah. I think I finally understand why it was so tough on my father.
