Grit

         Valentine’s Day was on Ash Wednesday this year. It was the day I started hyperbaric treatment. If I was one to believe in signs I might think it was a sign of something. The treatment essentially consists of lying in a clear acrylic tube into which pure oxygen is pumped. All I have to do is lie there and breathe it in two hours a day, five days a week, for two months. The bloodstream is flooded with oxygen, and this assists in repairing and growing capillaries. The hope is that the infection in my bones will be neutralized by this.  

        Because of the risk of combustion, they make you change into a cotton gown and pants and remove all your jewelry and adornments. I was surprised they let me keep my glasses on, but they said unless they contained titanium, they should be safe. They don’t let you take any items inside, so I couldn’t read or draw. There was a TV with a DVD mounted outside each chamber. They asked what I wanted to watch; I had no idea what they even had, and was so anxious I probably wouldn’t have been able to make a decision anyways. “How about True Grit?” asked the technician. “We have the original and the remake.” 

        They stuck three EKG pads on my chest, saying they only did this for the first couple of sessions, and fastened a bracelet around my wrist to ground me. The entire slab I was resting on was also grounded. “So am I in any danger of, you know, catching fire?” I asked. They said it was not one hundred percent impossible. 

        They gave me a mask to put on halfway through so I could breathe normal air for ten minutes. They said too much oxygen wasn’t good for your brain.

        I was to rap on the acrylic if I had any pain or discomfort. I wondered, if I was trapped inside with the oxygen shut off, how long it would take me to suffocate. Within a minute of them sealing me in, my ears started hurting. I knocked and the tech picked up the phone attached to the outside of the box. She said she would slow down the pressurization so I could adjust. My ears stopped hurting but they felt clogged the entire time; it was a good thing I knew most of the movie by heart. “You must pay for everything in this world, one way or another,” Mattie Ross says in the beginning. “There is nothing free except the grace of God.”

        Along with the light reflecting off the curved acrylic, in the TV I could see reflections of the techs moving around behind me. They checked the readouts on the machine regularly. They told me I could move around but I lay almost perfectly still the entire time. At one point, strobe lights started going off. One of the techs picked up the receiver and said, “Feel free to ignore those lights, it’s in another part of the building.” 

        My ears still felt stuffed up when they unsealed the tube two hours later. They said this was common and that I should get some allergy medication. They peered into my ears just to make sure, and checked my eyes and blood sugar as well. 

        The doctor stopped me as I was leaving the office and asked me how it went. “One down, thirty-nine to go!” she said. 

        “And then I rise from the dead?” I asked. 

        She pointed up at the crucifix on the wall and said, “You never know.” I made the sign of the cross and told her I’d be back the next morning. I went downstairs and out into the rain. Aside from my ears, I didn’t feel any different, just a little dazed. It was Valentine’s Day and my aching heart had not shuddered to a halt. Ash Wednesday and I had not burst into flames.