It Was Just A Little Cyanide.

I sat there in the doctor's office waiting patiently for her to come in, and wishing I'd at least brought my ipod with me. Why is it that time always takes on another dimension in a doctor's waiting room?

Glancing around the room at the posters I'd long since memorized, I made a conscious effort to breathe very shallowly, carefully taking just the tiniest of breaths, using just the top-most section of my lungs.

Every cell in my body cried out for a deep, full breath of fresh air.

It felt chilly in this cold, sterile room.  

I looked down at my sandaled feet and saw that my toes were turning a peculiar shade of purple - as were my fingertips.

In my consternation, I forgot to cautiously monitor my shallow breathing and filled my lungs almost half way on the next breath.  The result was a sudden paroxysm of wheezing and coughing and whooping, ending in something like the sound of a bagpipe when the air is all squeezed out of it at the end of the music.

Just then, Dr. Hopper walked in with her cheerful smile and long, blonde hair. "Well, what can we do for you today, Elizabeth?"  (Only the doctor calls me Elizabeth, and it makes me hate the name.)

I told her it was asthma turned into bronchitis, brought on by an abrupt allergic reaction.

She told me to take deep breaths while she listened.  This resulted in more horrible wheezing and fog horn sounds and gasping for air. This was followed by immediate orders for an inhaled steroid treatment, a blood oxygen count and some other tests - especially when she noted my discolored extremities.

Apparently with my decreased breathing and circulation, my body temperature was down to 96.1, and my blood oxygen was a little lower than normal too.  (Thus the purpling toes.)

The doctor asked if I had such bad asthma, why were we not treating it actively and aggressively.  

I told her that I've had asthma since my teenage years running around the track in high school.  But episodes were very sporadic - usually just triggered by allergic reactions.  I can usually go three or four years between attacks.  I told her that part of the problem was I needed a new inhaler.  It had been so long since I'd had to worry about asthma that it turns out the inhaler I had on me was expired.  

"Well, my dear," she asked, "What, may I ask, triggered this asthma attack so badly?"

I told her my roommate was smoking in the house the night before. She didn't think I would know if she did it in her bedroom.  

(I had come home two days earlier and caught her off guard smoking in the living room, so this attack was the result of that already heightened sensitivity.)

"Well, tell her she can't smoke in the house!" she snapped indignantly. "That could kill you.  I'm serious. It could really kill you!"

"Well, it's her house.  I can't really tell her what to do.  She usually smokes outside if she needs to smoke..." I offered dumbly in my roommate's defense. 

We had been through this once before.  And she had been really good about going outside to smoke - until it got a little cooler in the evenings and became a little inconvenient to go out.

"Well tell it to her like this," the doctor said.  "Okay, from now on, I will serve you all of your drinks (she pretty much drinks nothing but Pepsi) from now on.  

And I will pour them all into a glass over ice and serve them up to you.  But just sometime I will pour just a little cyanide into there with one of the sodas.  But I will only do it once in a while..."  

See if she doesn't understand the concept of smoking inside just sometimes being very dangerous for you if you explain it like that!"

Well, bless Dr. Hopper!  It so happens my roommate and I both have the same doctor, so Dr. Hopper understood very well how to best explain it so that Pam would get it!

I really would hate to have to move out.  I really enjoy living here.  We make a pretty good team; I love the location; my neighbors are all wonderful friends....  

Yet I do have to do what is best for me.  My father died of an asthma attack.  With each exposure to asthmatic irritants like the cigarette smoke, it seems the more sensitive my lungs become, so I have to be especially careful what goes into them.

As I think of smoking and asthma and cyanide, and contemplate the words of Dr. Hopper, of course I see parallels.  The asthma (or, maybe more accurately, the smoke that caused the asthma attack) is a metaphor for sin in our lives.

Sin is anything that comes between us and the perfect will of God.  A "little" sin can just as easily lead us to spiritual death as a "big" sin.  For sin is sin and it doesn't come in shades or degrees.  God calls a spade a spade.  It is we who paint things in shades of grey in order to allow ourselves to blur the clear black and white lines that have been drawn.  And I am sure that God up in heaven must sometimes just shake his head and sigh.