The Asthmatic

I was eating air; my abdomen was a bloat

And a balloon, ready to pop and whoop.

My stomach, a growling blimp, was ready

To give me a steady lift off the hospital bed.

I felt like a wimp and a gump, holding on to the sheet.

Not even a chimp could have cheered this chump.

I was down in the dumps; the doctor said I was over the hump.

My feet and face were wet with sweat.

There was not much meat on my ribs, because of

bronchial twitch and tweet.

I wheezed; my nose creased; the nasal prongs

made me sneeze.

My chest was a barrel; it sure sounded like one

when the doctor percussed.

I could not focus on my homework.

I was purple; I was skin and bones

with no tone in my muscles.

Once a husky boy, now I am dusky and cachexic

and quite often pyrexic.

Nurses and doctors probed every orifice in my body.

Vampire bats in white sampled my blood umpteen times a day.

I am a tween by age but an eight by height and weight.

I had the fight in me, though my chest was so tight

That I couldn’t count one to ten in one breath.

They served me cocktails by the vein to open up the bronchial tubes.

I inhaled cocktails now and then, administered by an agile Tech.

The PT thumped my fragile chest to dislodge and propel the phlegm.

“Cough, cough,” he said; I was too breathless to cough or talk.

The nurses removed my plate of Brussels sprouts

And a hot dog and sauerkraut, potential cause of choking

Though they poked and probed me with sweet words and smiles.

I was doggone sick; I could not blow a lighted candle in doctor’s office.

Eight hours later, the steroids kicked in and I could blow

a thousand candles in one whoosh.