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Eliza Chavez

Ms. Gardner

English 10H/Period 4

24 January 2018

Every Last Breath

Five years old, naive and unaware. Unaware of my body functions: the way blood

pumped through my veins, the way oxygen filled my lungs; being carried through my

bloodstream by diminutive, microscopic organisms called red blood cells, and the way my

airways were constantly viable in order to provide me with life—until I had my last breath.

Just a young girl with the fear of sleeping, with the fear of closing my eyes and being

incapable of opening them again, with the constant night terrors that filled my brain with nothing

but fear. Steadfast heart beats slowly increased getting faster and faster by the second—deep

breaths became short and stout, until the moment my lungs completely gave out. I envisioned

myself beside my body. Staring at myself I realized I was not more than a case for my soul. I

shut my eyes and wished to wake from this horrid, lucid dream. Little did I know I had wished to

wake to my biggest fear of all. That moment my eyes exploded into darkness and my larynx

(voice box) gasps for air. The air was freed out from my lungs as I felt them tighten in my chest:

the last pure breath.

My father's machismo smothered my mother's growth. Being overworked not by a real

laborious job, but by her five children. Strong willed and capable of doing anything for her child,

she took no hesitation in lifting me out of my bed and rushing towards our front door to give me

fresh air. I became faint and my eyes began to give out as my mother grabbed my face I could

see the way she spoke to me in utter distraught, a worried look took over her face and her body
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language changed. She screamed my name over and over while she begged me to breath ,

“Eliza… Eliza… mija respira por favor.” Her wild gestures did not match her faint voice, for she

was only a foot away.

My cranium was full of undefinable, rambunctious noises. Each gasp I failed to make

only added to my madness. It was then I accepted the fact that the last *Ahem* I ever took, I

took for granted.

Four years passed and I was no longer that naive and clueless little girl. I wanted to know

the reason to why my lungs gave out. I wanted to know about the body part that almost took my

life. That cold feeling in my chest sparked my curiosity. Soon after, I decided to go see Dr.

Williams at the Petaluma Health Center. She explained to me that what I felt was anxiety and

how that then lead to a panic attack. This all occurred due to a lung condition I had called

asthma. Asthma is when your airways produce extra phlegm as well ad narrow and swell. This

causes inflammation, making it more difficult to take normal breaths *Ahem.* Dr.Williams then

recited to me a short poem about anxiety who she claimed to be from an anonymous poet,

although I strongly believed it was her own from her personal experiences: “My lungs fill and I

feel ill; The world distorted, the sky transported- I lie transfixed on all that I've missed.”

After that moment and time I made the decision of expanding my knowledge on the

human body. I sat in the Petaluma Public Library that was only down the street from my home

and grabbed a pile of books with a picture of lungs or simply anything that looked medical. The

first to catch my eye was a book called Lungs: Your Respitory Stsyem by Seymour Simone. I did

not understand much of the lengthy medical words in the book until an older woman casually

walked up to me and asked me if I was doing okay. Her name was Kathy, she sat with me and

helped me understand the whole idea of the respitory system. Her simple paraphrase allowed me
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to be aware of the way one’s lungs functioned. “When you inhale, your diaphragm contracts and

moves downward increasing the space in your chest cavity; allowing your lungs expand, and

when you exhale your diaphragm relaxes and moves upward into the chest cavity where then the

muscles between the ribs relax to reduce the space in your chest cavity,” making sure to show me

the motions while pointing at the raw pink flesh on paper. She then went onto explaining the

different parts of a lung along with the different types of lung diseases. I will never forget the

moment she told me, “ One of the most common ways to get lung disease is by smoking

cigarettes.”

From that moment on, I noticed my father would smoke one or two cigarettes a day, from

what I observed. Not a day went by where I didn't see my father from inside the window or from

the few feet I had to maintain between us—as he was scared that by inhaling smoke, my lungs

would give out the way they had done before. Meanwhile he would shit on our bench with his

cold Dos Equis beer by his side, hitting the bottom of his white and gold Marlboro cigarettes.

Not only did I realize this was my fathers habit, but my brother’s as well. Only his was with the

icy blue and black Camel Crush cigarettes. There were times where I would tell them what I had

learned about lungs and the effects smoking would have on them.. I always ways got the same

response, “ no estés chingando, no sabes de lo que hablas. Nada me va pasar,” (don't be a burden,

you have no clue about what you're talking about. Nothing is going to happen to me).

It was not long after until my father took advantage of what allowed him to fill his lungs

with that rich-oxygen. He let his machismo to his mind and allowed it to manipulate his heart.

My fathernlost his drive and his motivation. Not to the coquettish traits of his classic white box,

nor wanting to fill his lungs with that addicting toxic smoke, but to his vulnerability. Oppressed

by a younger woman, now the mother to my youngest brother, oh what a true blessing in
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disguise. *Ahem,* oh how he takes my breath away.

That was it, I was the air that left his airway. My spot in his left lung, the one closest to

his heart was overridden by the thick white smoke. The same smoke that made his breaths stout.

I was no longer the breath of fresh air, I was not longer the membrane lining connecting to his

chest, but I certainly knew I was the richest and finest fresh air that ever traveled through those

blackening two lobes in his left lung. My father took my last breath when he walked out our

front door. It was then my clear rich-oxygen was intoxicated with smoke that curled out from the

cigarette between my father’s fingers as he drove off. Not only were my lungs one of my bodily

functions that allowed me to live, but they were also the only bodily function that made me

realize the way things can be inhaled and exhaled from your life. Before you are aware, once

things are far beyond your control, your airways would have already been poisoned by the smoke

that has made its way through your respitory system. *Ahem.* Your last pure breath.

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