Short Essay: Practicing To Be a Dying Victorian Child

It's a bit alarming when your doctor who spends all day looking at sick people looks alarmed when she's looking at you. 4 min. read

Practicing To Be a Dying Victorian Child

Two weeks ago I got the flu from my #2 daughter, the twenty-two year old. I whined about it a lot because the flu sucks.

Well, that's all gone straight downhill. By last weekend I was worse enough to land in Urgent Care with a pulse ox of 93 and a very weird, rattly cough. My lungs sounded like Rice Krispies when I breathed. At Urgent Care they stabbed my butt full of steroids and put me on the nebulizer for ten minutes and told me to come back in two days if I wasn't better.

By Monday I wasn't better. So, I went to see my regular doctor who looked at me like, "ummm, you look terrible." It's a bit alarming when your doctor who spends all day looking at sick people looks alarmed when she's looking at you. This is not comforting. She sent me across the street to get a chest x-ray at the hospital to determine whether I had "just a roaring case of bronchitis" or actual pneumonia.

My oldest daughter, who is twenty-four somehow, drew the "drive Mom around town" straw on Monday.

"Mom," she says, "pneumonia sounds like you're a sick Victorian child."

Yes, thank you. Very nice.

"If that's the case," I say, "I think I should get to go to Bath to convalesce by the sea for six months like they do in Jane Austen novels.”

"Mom," my youngest daughter, the eighteen-year old, has been telling me for a week and a half now, "you're not allowed to have tuberculosis."

Yes, thank you. Very nice.

The chest x-ray came back yes for pneumonia, which explains why my lungs feel like they're trying to cough themselves straight out of my body and why walking to the kitchen leaves me out of breath and feeling like I should get an Olympic medal for running the 1000-meter whatever.

On the plus side, I came home with enough pharmaceuticals to cover my coffee table. They work very slowly.

I told my Mother that I thought I should convalesce in Bath.

"Let's go!" she said.

Quick backstory. This is the same woman who five months ago said "we should go to the beach or Paris," and then three weeks later we were in Paris. This is also the same woman who nine years ago called me on a Friday and said, "is your passport ready?" and by Wednesday, five days later, we were in Paris. So, I can never really tell if my Mother is kidding when she talks about travel because sometimes she's not really kidding.

However, this time I told her I didn't think I was currently up to a flight to the other side of the world, so she and Dad decided I need to go to beach with them here to convalesce for three days instead. My Mother has two modes: Beach and Europe.

"But Mom," I say, "I don't really think I am going to have the energy to wander around the beach with you guys for three days."

"Oh no," she says, "I was just thinking you could look out the window and nap and breathe the salty air and write or something while your Dad and I go golfing."

We get home on Wednesday.

Hopefully, by then my lungs will have figured out that their home is inside my chest cavity, and they will have abandoned their attempts to escape.

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I post The Sooth episodes on Wednesday mornings and other stuff on Friday mornings

I may also post at other times, but for sure on those days (I shoot for 6:00am PST delivery so we can sip coffee together and celebrate another week done but don’t always quite make that). See you then!

About Rachel

Working on a scifi book series about a girl who just wants to heal her father from his terminal illness but inadvertently sparks an intergalactic incident instead.

Also writing poetry, essays, short stories, and whatever other weird stuff leaks from my pen.