IX: Lungwort
Plants that help you breathe easier.
Good morning. Today is nonidi, the 19th of Pluviôse, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate la pulmonaire, an herbal flower and also a form of lichen.
I've struggled to breathe for most of my life. In my childhood, I developed a severe asthma to grass, which severely curtailed the sports I could enjoy playing. Into adolescence, my sinuses seemed to shrink, and people often asked if I had a cold when I was talking. I suffered panic attacks in my 20s and 30s, panting as if a tremendous weight was pressed on my chest. And then, when I turned 40, I staggered up a staircase and collapsed with a pulmonary embolism and nearly died.
I spent two days in the hospital while they tried to figure out what had gone wrong and why. The blood clot began in my leg – as these things tend to do, but it still seems like a strange origin for a breathing problem – then migrated in flicks and flecks to my lungs. I had been laboring to breathe when doing simple tasks, but breathing was always difficult for me, and I just thought I had fallen dangerously out of shape.
Instead, my blood was clotting too easily. It was already clotty – I also had a stroke when I turned 30, when a similar problem in my neck flicked some gnarly clots into my brain stem – and the medicine I had been taking only added to the problem. The decision was obvious: hit blood thinners for the rest of my life.
So let's talk about flowers.
