Worried About My Lungs

At some point, soon after 9/11, I fought through all the barricades, police check points and other obstacles to get down to my apartment building in Battery Park City near ground zero. I rode my bike down and had to show my driver's license, sometimes two bills with my name and address on them and mainly use the force ("these are not the droids you want"...er, "I am approved to be on my way to my apartment down there at ground zero") to get "home".


The lobby of my apartment building was full of cots and dozens of heroic firefighters were sleeping there. I hiked up to the 23rd floor where my apartment was and got my two guitars, my computer and a few clothes and headed back down.

Storming right past the barricades and firefighters smoking cigarrettes outside my building, I went out the back straight into ground zero where my car had been parked and where I'd been about to move it when the second plane had hit and dropped debris all over. I found my car and while cars on either side of it were pretty much done for, I could make out the design of my car under the mound of drying, caking sludge. I scooped it out with both hands and I got the door open. I threw my gear in and, to my pleasant surprise, the car started on first turn.

I drove my car out of the area and on up to the upper west side where my friend, Greta, was working at a home-office where I could base myself for the afternoon. As hard as it was getting down to ground zero, you should have seen the shocked looks as the firefighters and police and soldiers along the way out would open their gates for this sludge-covered Nissan Maxima coming out from the stench and steaming hole of ground zero. I cried as I drove and nobody stopped me.

I think it's a healthy thing that I've started therapy to deal with some of this -- and especially about some of the individual horrors I saw on the day itself. The whole of it obviously weighs heavily on me still.

On top of it, I think I'm going to have to go to the doctor to have my lungs checked out. I've never really been much of a believer in "asthma" because as the hard core athlete I was growing up I'd always figure any time I'd be short of breath it was an indication that I mainly just needed to get in better shape. And it took a lot for me to get out of breath as I was obsessive in my workouts. I figure many kids use the "asthma" thing as a crutch for not pushing it harder.

At any rate, my lungs bug me a little bit sometimes lately. Maybe it's just a symptom of geting older, maybe it's just that I don't work out like that anymore. But all these press reports this week about lung problems in 9/11 workers have me thinking that maybe I need to have it checked out.

P.S. I'm not sure what it means but I find it interesting as an aside that both times I've written about my apartment and 9/11 we have used a picture from the cover of the Economist.