Karma

Asthma thieving my breath and still I drag my feet before I start the steroids.  How can such a bland, aspirin-like tablet release the hounds of hell?  Okay, maybe not Dobermans with spittle enough to fill a spittoon but, surely, the vice-grips of a Pit Bull or two with snarls.  Nightly, they cramp my legs as I bolt from bed to shake off the demon pain before I collapse wide-pulsed and eyes pounding, shake loose an insomnia that careens between rattling 'frig and striking clock.  Yet in the ER I routinely prescribed these very pills to even the youngest of wheezers.  Perhaps the weary curses of midnight mothers with unnerved darlings pumped on prednisone carry some weight after all.


Marilyn Aschoff Mellor