Summer Soltice, 2014. The longest day in the longest year of my life. Looking outside at the rich, verdant trees on my block, full of birds singing and squirrels chirruping, you’d never believe that we had one of the worst winters in my country’s history (and the second-worst winter in my city’s history). You don’t know what cold is unless you’ve been up and ready for work at 4:30 am, waiting for a bus when it’s -19F. For the entire month of January our temperatures were below zero. At least one day a week that month, the whole city was shut down, and this city is known for never. Shutting. Down. Getting ready to go open the coffee shop, I would put on: underwear, long underwear and a moisture-wicking t-shirt (veteran cold-weather humbugs all know that cotton next to your skin can trap moisture, causing hypothermia), a thermal shirt, jeans, sweatpants over the jeans, a sweater over my thermal shirt, and hoodie over that. On top of that I’d wrestle on two pairs of wool socks under boots, gloves under my mittens, and a scarf and hat all wrapped up in my gigantic winter coat that went to my knees. All of this because I was waiting for the bus for five to ten minutes, and the news was reporting that being outside for longer than two minutes was dangerous.
This winter was hard on everyone, but it was particularly hard on my dad. It was during the first polar vortex that my family began to realize that something was seriously wrong with his breathing.
Dad’s winter started with a nasty fall. In mid-November I got a call from him at the coffee shop: never a good sign. When I asked him what was up, he told me he was in a cab on his way to the emergency room because he had fallen on concrete and landed square on his tailbone. Yes, he could walk, but it hurt very much. I left work and waited for him in the hospital while he was x-rayed and examined. Dad is in his mid-seventies, and a fall like this was always a top worry of mine, especially because he doesn’t drive and uses public transportation. My grandmother on my mother’s side, who is only a couple of years older than my dad, had broken her pelvis the previous winter, and after seeing what she went through I hoped against hope that he hadn’t broken anything. Turns out, he had badly bruised his tailbone, but nothing was broken. Thank the Lord! He said he fell because he lost his footing. To this day I wonder if he fell because he was short of breath. Dad walked very gingerly for the following month, but there was something different about it, something other than just watching where his feet were going, taking his time to prevent a fall.
Dad loves my coffee shop, and since his retirement his main social event has been visiting me during my shifts and proudly getting his VIP-status free cup of coffee. There are big, beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows wrapping around the shop, and when I stand at the espresso bar making drinks I can see him coming down the block. My father is hard-of-hearing and can read lips, so sometimes we start our conversation early before he comes into the store. It’s a secret moment I treasure. I mouth to him yes or no questions (“Do you want your coffee?”) or tell him things I can’t say out loud (“Having a shitty day. The drunk called in sick again.”) But I started to notice that he wasn’t looking up when he would come down the street. And then I noticed that there was a distinct shuffle in his step. And then I noticed that he was stopping every few steps and frowning at the ground. He was struggling to breathe.
At first we just thought it was the cold. Then he went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a viral lung infection. He’d feel better for a few days, and then feel sick again. This time he was diagnosed with a bacterial lung infection. He had two bouts of pneumonia, one bacterial that resisted three rounds of antibiotics, and one viral “walking pneumonia” that lasted for months. Well, I can tell you he wasn’t doing much walking. Dad was inside and immobile for most of the winter. We thought as the weather lightened up, so would his symptoms. But they didn’t. They got worse.
One crisp March saturday he came to the coffee shop, beet red and pouring sweat. The effort of walking the block and a half from the train station had exhausted him. He swallowed big gulps of air and shook his head. “It’s like nothing,” he gasped. “I’m so out of breath.” I touched his face, and it felt feverish. “I don’t think I can stay,” he said, and after promising me to make a doctor’s appointment he took a cab straight home.
After my shift, I picked up some soup and necessities for him and brought them to his apartment. It took him an abnormally long time to answer the door. Luckily, I have my own set of keys. He was standing up, his face completely grey. Getting up from his chair to the door was too much of a strain. He sat back down and struggled for air even with no movement at all, simply sitting. “This is scary,” he said. Oh, Poppa. You don’t have to tell me. We discussed what we should do: he had an appointment with his doctor, at the hospital, first thing in the morning. Should he go to the emergency room now? He told me he thought he would be fine overnight, and besides if he went to the hospital they would probably just hold him overnight until he saw his doctor in the morning anyway. After making him promise and pinky swear multiple times that if he felt like he couldn’t breathe he would call me or call an ambulance, I left him for the night. I called my older siblings and my twin to let them know what was going on, and my older sister (who I will call Cindy) offered to take him to the hospital for his appointment. I prayed all night long that he would make it through.
Before this whole process, I thought that you went to the doctor, they told you what was wrong, they gave you a treatment, you felt better. That was that. I was not prepared for how long things would take, or how the diagnosis would slip and flip over and change over the coming months. Dad was given oxygen therapy and had an oxygen unit was delivered to his apartment. First he was diagnosed with another damned run of pneumonia. Then with x-rays, that diagnosis changed to emphysema. Emphysema meds had little or no effect. The oxygen wasn’t enough. We started to worry that he had cancer. Time for a second opinion. More x-rays and tests were taken and deemed “inconclusive.” Time for a lung biopsy.
During this time of constant testing and worrying, I watched my father dramatically age. He had always been vainly proud of his wrinkle-free face, and would always ask people to guess his age. Despite being in his mid-seventies, people always guessed in the late-fifties range. He was always proud of how quickly he walked, how he managed his own comings and goings through our city’s complicated public transportation system, his vibrant and active social life. First he slowed down. Then he shrank. And then he wrinkled. His limbs slimmed from lack of use, despite chair exercises my sister and I encouraged him to do. His ruddy complexion turned into a gray one.
I’ve aged, too. During one of our many waiting room vigils, my twin (who I will call Lisa) sighed and mentioned that she had found her first few gray hairs. I went to the ladies’ room to check my own head and, sure enough, I found a few. Further examination showed that I also had dark bags forming under my eyes and a crease starting to set into my mouth from constant use of my “we’re going to get through this” face. This year we’ve all gotten much older.
In honesty, it’s been a while since we had reason left to smile. Hello sunshine, come into my life.
Enjoy your solstice.
the function test 