Meow v. Roar

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Purrr. Purrr. Squeak. Squeaky purr. . . You might not recognize the sounds from the spelling, but that’s me wheezing.

I never knew what wheezing was.  But one night, as I was falling asleep,  I thought I heard a high-pitched purring under my bed. I rang for the caregiver, who looked under the bed and in the corners of the bedroom. No kitten.  I was nonplussed; the noise sounded distinctly like a lost and hungry kitten. But where was she? Then, the caregiver broke the news:  the kitten was me. The purring was me. I was wheezing.

An old man, I thought. But I wasn’t even 80 yet.  I had stopped smoking almost 50 years ago. (I discovered that made no difference: once you start, you're marked, or rather your lungs are marked – literally.  Over the years, metamorphosing into scars.) I ran, biked, worked out.  How could I be a wheezer?

This was all new to me, so I went to the all knowing seer : Dr. Google Ph.D, who referred me to her colleague Dame Wikipedia, OBE. I discovered that to be REALLY wheezing, I should be whistling, rasping, or hissing – not purring. There are no cats when wheezing. So I was an anomaly.    But this was serious stuff:  asthma, lung cancer, COPD, congestive heart failure. More serious than litter box clean up.

So when I started purring one evening, I wheeled to the office of the med-tech, the employee who distributes regularly scheduled meds, is gate keeper over some meds, strictly guards narcotic meds.  Of immediate importance, my inhaler was locked in her office – and I am purring. The sweet little kitten became feral. The transformation to tiger was about to occur – quick, I need my inhaler.

But the med-tech was on her break. The med-room door remained locked. The med-tech break remained unbroken. The purring grew louder - a roar.

 Who takes priority? What is protocol?  Does the kitten become a lion?  

 

Dick Weinman is an AARP Volunteer Blogger and an Assisted Living Guru