Another Lawng Story: (Warned yall this time.)- >>>Do I have a story for you.<<<
Yes. You do. I feel like saying, "Good boy!"
You get a star.
(Now why would you think I would relate to hours of having physics and medicine run your body, mind, and destiny?)
You did real good.
>>>>Folks, next time you swallow something, take a moment to feel it slide into the stomach. It is a state of grace.<<<
The choir shouts amen.
I've not done the swallowing one. I don't want to be rude saying I can understand it, but I've done some similar ones and know what the heck you're talking about in giving thanks, and how we make completely natural assumptions about all the machinery running our bodies for us.
I was in a position to have "the drowning reflex" once, when they needed to dump a fluid into my airways (intentionally).
Now that is an odd one most of us never get. Because if you get it, you are drowning.
It was a privilege, to get it. Without drowning, I mean, sure yah, because I think about all the people who drown. But a pleasure to see that our body gets air down there and doesn't want water and can sort this out. Thank goodness, without guidance from us. And these guys were going to let me drown "safely", but still have the conscious and unconscious whoodles of how it feels, without the ultima-cheeso panic.
It was living in in science fiction. Anatomical science fiction. A free, different ending to life.
And it only cost me 1200.00. (It's better to have your sci-fi when you're insured.) :o)
It was thrilling, in a sensate way. Broadened my experience. Oh yah. Neat. But not something you go to Disney World for, although you should. (I mean if you could and I hadn't, I probably would.) Then, I guess I'm not Disney customaterial.
My amusement parks are Hospitals.
And I've done the "radiation kills cells and they die and fall off." And they slough out, and turn grey, and you need alive ones to live. You can have many die off, lots of them; all in certain areas; but they need replaced with good ones or even marginally alive ones to get you through.
With applied radiation, you can feel the dead portions. The effected portions; the areas. The areas in which cells are dying en masse. Completely. So the physical sense is that you feel death. We think of death, maybe, as spiritual death; and that you'll feel that ~ death of consciousness. And that's what people worry about in cancer. Which is true. They do, by golly.
But this unexpected death you feel is "real" death. Physical termination and decomposition. It's just like those portions will feel, as a corpse.
Inanimate. Gray. You're getting a preview, a "living preview", of death. They're dangling you over the pond of death and you're getting your feet wet. Soaking. You recognize it. "This is what dead." These tissues, are dead. Eeek. Even though they're still attached to me mostly, not dissolved yet, not sand ~ they're dead. Some aren't even so well attached, and that's why you can pull pads of beard hair out with your fingertips, to scare Scott. If this continued, the scope of these areas, you'd have no place to go. You need the "live" parts, to live in. You're taking rooms. Taking up space.
You'd have to find a new place.
Well; or just go.
So thank goodness for animate cells.
Uh?
Yah.
With the lungs, it's, "If I don't get air through these lung machines, these bio-departments, to the rest of the department heads ~ soon ~ there's going to be failure."
You get conscious messages like that. Like talking to you.
Which is interesting, because sometimes it doesn't. Or it tells you total nonsense. I think we've all heard that.
My lungs were not getting air into the blood "stream". The circulo-whirl. Oxygen.
The oxygen in the blood was down to 58%. That seems like plenty, but it's dead territory. You're dead. Your blood oxygen right now is most likely 100%, could be 99%, but if it's 97.5 you're eligible for Medicare treatment. It's not good for you to be at 97.5.
You have to work extremely hard, as hard as you've done anything in your life, to keep the lungs moving, at 58%. To keep them operating, while they themselves are being denied fuel oxidant. And some needs left over for the brain, because it tells the lungs to operate. Some part of the brain in the lower middle near the spine maybe.
So you're breathing rapidly. Full muscle inhalation expansions and rapid exhalation compressions at levels of high strength. Say deep breath full in-and-outs of 1.5 to 2 seconds apiece, to keep the fire in the lungs from going out. To keep the coal aglow. The last cinder; now covered with ash. If it goes out.....the lungs will go themselves and consciousness will disappear. Right after each other. That's the guess, and it's a good one. Because you will have lost your engine and your controllers. You will be dead in the water, a ship with no boiler fire and no crew.
A ghost ship. A corpse.
Keep that goddam fire going. Okay? Shut the eff up now. The fast breaths.....keep the flywheel going. Do not stop. Bicycle in high gear, as fast as you can, or this bike is going to stop and fall over. You're going to tumble over into new territory, because there's a cliff beside the road.
Can't__take___time___to__talk.
["Blow as hard as you can into this"]
___hur__hur__hrr__fuck___hurr___nur___hur__you__hur__hur__hur
A doctor told me he had never seen a living body with that low oxygen in it's blood. I asked how it was possible then. He related it to "The Diving Response." That's because I had descended to that level over a period of a month, instead of hours or days; that my lung's musculature had increased; and that the neural pathways relevant to this mess mesh had been "beefed up". The highway of information between the brain control center and the lungs (and finally heart) had been whipped up past T1 to fiber cable. Everything else in the body had been dimmed (which is why I couldn't walk), the optical-cable had been routed and tested, and now they were trying to keep a glow being seen at either end of the cable. To even see each other.
They had increased the pump impulse-rate to the top position; top notch; practically created a new notch; one directing opening and closing the lungs at the maximum rate physically possible.
And perfectly timed the heart:
_beat_push_compress_beat_push_compress_beat_push_compress__beat_
It was hone-tuned operating machine, he said. Finely. And finally. That had built itself in the minimum time of a month, at the maximum rate of construction. To protect itself from death. To ward off what it saw coming. An engineering marvel. A warvel. A masterpiece of work. If your body had not had that time, and responded emphatically to those messages, and and developed these muscle and nervous control measures and and known which were it's crucial parts to save.....you wouldn't. Be. You would be dead. You're alive, because the brain had a month or two to work. Most drownings take place over minutes; and yours lasted a month.
I was tired. Lemme tell you. Panting for a month, like a hot cat, without stopping.
Does your heart know, that there are muscles around your lungs that are keeping the blood turning in the air, that is the same blood those lung muscles need? Yes. And it knows it has to get it to them, without taking too much for itself.
Does heart know that its muscles, the muscles performing pumping expansions and contractions of the heart, need the same oxygen to keep pumping? Yes. It is handling the very substance it needs to keep itself alive and working. It could take what it needs, and give the lungs what-ever, but that wouldn't be very smart.
It knows, that if lung stops, it will stop. Freeking plow-crash. It needs what it's getting to pump what it has, but its got to do it with the Absolute Minimum, and jam down as hard as possible on the rest, to get some to the hardened muscles squeezing the lungs and the rest to the fine tissue exchanger sieves in the lungs. Or we will suffocate.
Heart's having to put a lot of blood into the lungs and that blood's not getting but a teentsy portion of the oxyfuel in it it usually gets. Damn. This isn't good blood, like usually. Not much power in it. Not much muscle energy. Muscles are also filling with toxins. The stuff heart's sending to muscles isn't doing much good at all, but this is the only blood we have, and we hope those guys do their best with it.
Maybe it's that tiny piece of the brain, also kept barely alive, that knows these priorities. This consciousness was the thing about to go though.
Heart and fire, firepump, are willing to cooperate. To brace. To coordinate. To cancel lesser functions; all other functions. They are so woven together, so impetual motion, they cannot be separated without extinguishment. How do they know to do all this stuff? I don't know. They're cool. They do, and you just enjoy it.
They try to keep the fire glowing, down to the very last coal. I know this because I've been there. Literally; as close as you can get. Consciously.
Such loyal, loyal, servants. Such friends. Wowwomama!
My.
Here. Have a cheeseburger while I get us a drink. |
