I know what it is now: —my Burden; or, at least what I think it is; or, I should say, what I hope it isn’t. Cryptogenic bilateral fibrosing pleuritis is, or may be; or, I pray, not be my burden. A string of not overly large not overly confusing words. Quite simple; cryptogenic means we don’t know WTF is causing this; bilateral means both sides, as in, there’s no other side left; fibrosing means turning to tight, inelastic, constricting scar; and pleuritis means the linings of the lungs, both the inside lining of the chest cavity and the enveloping lining of the lungs themselves. The purpose of the pleura is to allow for two adjacent surfaces to slide against each other with minimal friction, so smooth and effortless as to be almost not there, and a thin layer of lubricating serous fluid facilitates said sliding; so, the burden takes away the smooth sliding surfaces that instead turn into thick, constricting multilobular envelopes of nodular stiffening scar, gradually, painfully, on both sides.
And maybe that’s not it. Maybe that is not my burden, but it’s what I’m afraid of, the daily diminishment of my lung volumes, the constant need to breath deep the air that I cannot; and the pain, the pain of each breath on both sides of the oxygenation, because there’s movement, like wax on wax off, only, it’s air in air out. The pain’s not bad, yet. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it pain, it is more subtle, simply a gentle reminder with each breath, especially if too deep, like an incubating egg nestled next to my heart that trembles from the force of what’s inside growing, straining, pushing against the sides, chipping away with its sharp little beak until one day it breaks free to spread its wings to fulfill its potential, my own personal raging Phoenix of pain.
I know what the pain is like for I’ve felt it before, the first time all those years ago when the little bird hatched in my pericardium. It began one night deep in my throat at the base of my neck, a pressure that I eased by sitting up in bed. In time, it turned more malignant, becoming a muscular hand wrapped around the base of my neck from the inside, squeezing in time with the beating of my heart, lub-dub, lub-dub; but, I could breath. That Phoenix was independent of my breath, this one is not.