(Yes, I know that is a mouse pictured above and not a rat but listen, shut up.)
You’ve probably come across reference to these experiments, either in honest conversation or in some motivational meme. Back in the 1950s, some asshole drowned or nearly drowned a bunch of rats, showing that if you rescued a rat right before they gave up swimming and drowned, and then put it back in the water again, it would last longer trying to stay alive, now having hope of rescue.
I think about this experiment a lot. Mostly I think about how scared those rats must have been, having been in their situation many times. This past Saturday, I was waiting for someone to come get me before I stopped breathing. Only this time, for the first time in my life, they didn’t get there before I lost consciousness. (Obviously they got there in time to make sure I didn’t die, else I would be typing this from beyond the grave which, while awesome, would probably lead to a different type of blog.)
There is something oddly comforting about having a seizure from an asthma attack.
Asthma is one of those things that people (including medical professionals) refuse to take seriously. You can be to the point where you are losing vision, gasping for air, unable to speak or move, and the people around you will think you just need to be told to take deep breaths and calm down. If ever you want to experience gaslighting, have an invisible illness like asthma. You live in a reality where you know you are skating close to death on a daily basis and everyone else assumes your asthma is like having seasonal allergies or feeling like you jogged a bit too fast.
So when you become hypoxic because your brain no longer has adequate oxygen and your body goes into seizure all because of your asthma, there is a consolation prize of validation. Half the time you think to yourself that your symptoms are imagined or exaggerated because that’s how everyone else treats you. And when you have something really horrible like this happen, especially with witnesses that know you, it’s terrible but it’s also you start to feel like your realities are finally starting to meet up with the people around you.
I had always kept consciousness while paramedics arrived for me during attacks. Maybe that’s because I was lucky enough the first time, and like the rats, I learned to hold on longer knowing help would eventually come. I’d gotten to the part where vision starts to go black around the edges, creeping inward, but never to the next part until last week.
The next part is nothing. There is no recorded data for that time, as my brain was malfunctioning.
So what happens to the rats when you don’t save them before they lose consciousness? After you’ve previously saved them multiple times before that? What can I expect? Will I be less capable of hanging on for help next time? Or will my brain be like “it’s cool, just die a little bit, have a snooze, they’ll get to you eventually just like last time”? Did anyone find that professor who was torturing rats and punch him in the mouth?
I just re-read Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH a few months ago. And Flowers For Algernon before that. There seems to be no shortage of quality, rodent-themed literature reflective of the human condition. I could name a few more just from my own reading but this is not a list of books about rodents. Maybe I’ll do that later. No, I’m sure someone has done this. Just search “books featuring rats” or something. Can we include The Mouse As The Motorcycle? Mice and rats. Like, there probably aren’t as many books about gophers, so “rodent” may not me accurate. (I was going to say mole, but then remembered that moles aren’t rodents. Though bunnies are also not technically rodents, I would want Watership Down in that list.)
The point is that not a week goes by that I don’t think about those tortured rats. And that was before this last make-out session with death. My proclivity for existential rumination does not a very merry Christmas make.
As I struggle to get appointments with doctors and keep up with my rapidly-degenerating Earth vessel (the outside is fine, it’s the inside that’s constantly failing), more and more scary things pop out of the shadows. And although these are metaphorical scary things, my dog still woofs at them because she is in her woofing-at-shadows phase of childhood. And much like her, I currently have a low threshold for dealing with multiple things at once.
I’m now wearing an oxygen monitor 24 hours a day (except when it’s charging) along with other various stats. I live alone, so my risk of dying from what happened last time is rather high, especially during sleep hours. So my best defense is an obsessive offense, monitoring for any tiny change in my breathing to make sure I can contact someone.
All this to say, I have hope but it’s taking a lot of energy to keep air in my lungs while I wait for help.
