Just Breathe

Out of nowhere, I started coughing. It wasn’t the deep, lung-scouring cough of an experienced smoker or someone in the last days of a bout with bronchitis. I sounded like a chihuahua with laryngitis. I would start to inhale and my lungs would reject it, returning the air to the outside world with a pathetic little “kaff”.

We were in the infusion bay at the cancer hospital, and I was only a couple of minutes into my first infusion with the new chemotherapy drug. After about my third cycle of coughing I managed to communicate with Lisa something to the effect of “can’t breathe”. She jumped up and went to the nurses’ station to inform them. I might have blacked out for a couple of seconds because when I looked up, I was surrounded by nurses and extra machinery.

I’ve learned that in every group of health care workers, there always seems to be a bunch of people at various levels of skill and one who is hyper-competent. Most of the time, we don’t get to know who that person is, but in times of stress they make themselves known. This one was a guy named something like “Gibi” (I never caught his name in personal conversation, I overheard him talking to people at the next chair while I was trying to sleep). He was the only male nurse I remember seeing. Some of the female nurses seemed scared, as though they hadn’t yet received stress inoculation on the job. Others were calmly charting notes and delivering meds. Gibi was barking orders, calling out dosages, running the show. He seemed like he might have even been enjoying himself — it’s what he trained for, he’d mastered the training, and this was where he belonged.

Gibi reminded me of another hyper-competent nurse who was pulled away to help give me an I.V., in part because he’d set my I.V. before I was aware of his hyper-competence. This nurse was further along in her career arc, and her responses to her coworkers were clipped and irritable. She set my I.V. with contemptuous ease after 2 of the newer nurses just couldn’t pull it off.

I’m pretty sure it’s the same across disciplines. I’ve seen it in programming teams, sales teams, and read about it in military teams. From what I’ve seen, there seems to be a pattern — hyper-competent and enjoying oneself, hyper-competent and irritated at having to carry the team, and hyper-competent and burned out. With luck, the burned out types can perhaps find a new team and sort themselves out enough to circle back to the beginning.

Much as I’d like to be, I am not the hyper-competent on my work team. I do work on myself and try to live up to the standards set by the guy who is, but I’m nowhere near as smart as he is. I have my area of expertise but in general knowledge of our product he runs circles around the rest of us. It makes me wonder if management courses (not that I ever want to become management) talk about identifying and taking care of hyper-competent team members or if all the attention is on the newbies and medium-competence types, trying to squeeze more out of people who aren’t ready to deliver it, whether due to lack of experience, desire, or motivation.

Anyway, Gibi got the team to calm my breathing, and started to talk about next steps. One option was to continue, though they said I now had enough Benadryl in my system that safety protocols mandated I go to the ER on the next incident. The other option was to delay chemo until next week and start over again. They phoned up to the oncologist and he saw reasonable risk/reward to continue. I did as well, given that I already hate driving up there and didn’t want to schedule yet another trip. With oncology’s OK and my readiness to try again, they reset the machines for a slower dosage and we started up again. Despite promises of a Benadryl-induced coma, it never materialized.

The chemo infusion bay of the hospital in Oklahoma City covers an entire floor, and patient chairs are crammed into the aisles every few feet. This contrasts with the bay down in Norman’s old hospital, where the chairs were in small cubicles with privacy screens. I’ve never seen the chemo bay at Norman’s new hospital but I’m told it’s even nicer and better. I might get to see it sometime around Labor Day.

Overcrowded and anti-privacy as the Oklahoma City bay is, it did afford me the chance to strike up a conversation with the guy across from me. This is something I never do, but I was somehow moved to try, and I learned a little about him before we went back to conversations with our respective spouses. I think maybe God is working on my conversational skills, which are very nearly zero. An overcrowded chemo bay is a much more conducive spot for that than private suites with all your favorite vintage shows streaming into your own personal TV. Everyone has to bring their sacrifice, and I think mine is my reticence to talk to strangers. Our pastor has been leaning hard on the Great Commission this year, and I can’t really do that without talking to people.

There’s a lot of verses on holding your tongue, on uncouth speech, and gentle answers that turn away wrath. The Bible doesn’t say a whole lot about striking up conversations. I think it’s because the people lived on top of one another, and it was difficult to avoid talking to folks. In America, we’ve built a society seemingly intended to allow us to ignore people for as long as possible. It certainly makes it possible for introverts to flourish. I struggled to find an appropriate verse for this missive, but as I prepare for my next foray into the overcrowded chemo bay, I found one to think about as I gather my courage and just breathe.