GET YOUR GAME ON: What’s old is new again in ‘Batman: Arkham Origins’

ALBUM REVIEW: Leroy does country/bluegrass Justice

First Posted: 11/1/2013 Katie&#8217;s email was urgent and direct: &#8220;I&#8217;m on oxygen full-time now, so when you see me in class don&#8217;t go making a fuss.&#8221;
As sad as the news made me feel, I had to smile. I knew Katie well enough by then to know the last thing she wanted was to be singled out as &#8220;the sick girl.&#8221; And she knew me well enough to know the minute I saw the tube in her nose &#8212; the cannula, I believe they call it &#8212; I&#8217;d react &#8230; or, as she rightly feared, over react. So a word to the wise was a good idea.
This was the start of the fall semester in 2011. I was well aware of Katie&#8217;s condition by then because the very first day I had her in class (Feature Writing, fall of 2009) she stayed afterwards to tell me something important: if she ever passed out, call 9-1-1 immediately &#8230; and be sure to tell them she was on Viagra. You cannot give nitro to someone taking Viagra, she warned.
Viagra?
It opens vessels, she said bluntly.
That was the day Katie told also me the lovely tapestry purse hanging on her side with a shoulder strap was not a purse. She opened it to reveal an electronic device that controlled the IV drip that was being administered to her 24-7 through a tube inserted into the middle of her chest. She put up with that tube for more than six years and for a good portion of that time the drug she was on needed to stay cold so there was ice in the faux purse as well, which made it rather heavy and which for someone constantly out of breath was no picnic.
She also told me that day her only hope for survival was a lung transplant, but she couldn&#8217;t even be placed on a donor list because, for all she was going through, she was not yet sick enough. Which made me wonder when I got the email about the oxygen if maybe this in a strange way was good news because she needed to get sicker before she could get better.
But that was not the case, either, I later learned. She needed to get sicker still.
So, yes, I was darned curious about the oxygen. And, yes, telling me to play it cool was very wise. And it all would have worked out just fine if only Katie had been on time.
The next morning, I was was scanning the crowded computer lab looking for her beautiful smile, which I knew would be there, oxygen or not, when I realized the students were no longer looking at me but past me &#8230; some with mouths agape. I immediately turned toward the door in the front of the room and there stood Katie, tube hooked on her ears and under her nose, oxygen tank at her side, her eyes locking on mine seeming to say, &#8220;Can you believe this?&#8221;
To make matters worse, the class was overbooked so every seat at every computer was occupied and two other students were sitting on chairs in the aisle. The silence seemed to last forever, only broken when this sweet young lady in the back leaped to her feet and said, &#8220;Here, take mine.&#8221; And Katie got to parade from the front of the room to the back, fully on display for all to see.
We laugh about that day now. In fact, I think we laughed about it right after class. For a girl with a very serious illness, Katie does not take herself seriously.
Katie has pulmonary hypertension. If you&#8217;ve never heard of it, don&#8217;t feel bad. She told me just the other night there are only 30,000 cases in the country. She says for the first three years she was misdiagnosed as having asthma, or epilepsy or &#8220;it&#8217;s all in your head.&#8221; Then she passed out while walking to class at Marywood University in September of 2006. The official diagnosis came at The Cleveland Clinic, where, she says, &#8220;my parents were told not to get their hopes up.&#8221;
&#8220;Pulmonary hypertension is a progressive debilitating lung disease that causes right-sided heart failure,&#8221; Katie rattles off when asked to define it. She refers to it as simply PH and has become an expert on it. When she writes, and she writes a lot, she likes to substitute a &#8220;ph&#8221; for the letter &#8220;f,&#8217; as in &#8220;all PH patients want is to be able to breathe phree.&#8221;
Katie emailed me prior to the start of the current semester with this: &#8220;I&#8217;m off the oxygen. I want to get back in school.&#8221;
She saved the best news for when we met in person. She&#8217;s off the IV drip too. No more tube in her chest. Not that she&#8217;s out of the woods, but Katie says right now her &#8220;numbers&#8221; are &#8220;better than ever.&#8221; And she has &#8220;no pain &#8230; other than emotional.&#8221;
She has to use a nebulizer four times a day (&#8220;for maintaining,&#8217; she says) and is still on several drugs, but has been granted officially the title of &#8220;long-term survivor&#8221; and as such has been named to the Pulmonary Hypertension Association Advisory Board. Among other things, PHA raises money, half of which goes for research and half for patient outreach, Katie says.
I&#8217;m telling you about her today because November is PH Awareness Month and Katie has organized a dinner-dance on Nov. 23 at Genetti&#8217;s Ballroom in Wilkes-Barre. Tickets are available at firstgiving.com/phassociation/breathephreegala or from Katie herself at breathephree@gmail.com
Tickets are $35 for adults and $15 for children 2 to 12. She&#8217;s also accepting monetary donations or baskets to raffle. A show of support would do her a world of good.

All Katie wants to do is to breathe ‘phree’