Did I Ever Tell You About My NDEs?
At this point in 2020, I think it's appropriate I finally write about the two different times I've been seconds from death. Both of these instances of near-fatality were due to respiratory complications.
You can see why I'm very serious about masks, sanitation protocols, and staying away from people now, yes? Let me reiterate - I've almost died twice now thanks to breathing. The irony of a pandemic that kills us through a virus of (primarily) the lungs has hit me mentally, and anyone who's been through what I have, like a truck.
When I was 21 to 22 I lived in an apartment that had a well hidden, but very serious black mold problem. Having zero respiratory or other underlying health issues my whole life until moving into that apartment, I had no idea that I was slowly becoming more asthmatic every time I slept in the bedroom there. I only lived there from June to December of 2005, and that amount of time caused what follows.
The bedroom was in the basement level of an historic train station, however by the early 2000's it was made of brick and mold more than anything. I moved out from that apartment with a cold that wouldn't quit, and feeling like I was getting tight in my chest every time I'd try to go to bed or fall asleep. Yet, with zero asthma in my life or medical history, I didn't know what it was I was experiencing, and it wasn't severe enough to even think to see someone about it.
Flash forward to April, 3 months after moving out of the moldfest, living temporarily with a friend (no breathing issues there), and then moving home to my parent's house. The mild cold symptoms I'd had at that moldy apartment had evolved to a full-on flu. I moved home while sick, and was feeling on the mend by a few days later when my parents asked if I'd wanted to come outside and help with yard work. Being the generally lazy, late-sleeping, college grad I was, I felt obligated to help and so went out back of the house and used the leaf blower to round up Spring piles of rotten leaves.
Well what's in those leaves in April? Mold. Lots of it.
I breathed in enough of it, by that evening I felt a strange pain, a soreness in the entirety of my shoulders neck and chest, and a strange sensation that felt like Rice Krispies when I pressed on my skin. That seemed new and unnerving, but when I showed my mom she insisted I had pulled a muscle. I hadn't pulled any muscles and hadn't exerted myself severely at all. I held a leaf blower, that's hardly "yard work". By late evening I was gasping for breath, sitting alone in my bedroom while my parents went to bed around 10pm.
You have to be wondering what my mother and father are thinking at this point, I'm sure. Why did I not tell them I thought something much worse was going on and I was getting scared? Oh folks, I wish I could Hollywood reenact this scene, it's almost impossible to believe. My parents, my intelligent, college educated parents DID NOT BELIEVE ME. I've never been overdramatic, or melodramatic, and I often react quite emotionally, it's not with unfounded reason. My mother has a fear of doctors which is very re