Ulrike isn’t breathing.
Ulrike hadn’t noticed she’d stopped breathing.
Ulrike can speak.
Ulrike can move.
Ulrike can think.
Five incompatible facts that require an immediate cessation of dying and a quick inquiry. This isn’t a game any more. Everything else can wait now. Please be so kind as to explain. For God’s sake do something!
As she attempts to breathe, Ulrike’s body convulses hideously. Her eyes widen and widen. Nothing goes in, and nothing hurts. It isn’t suffocating, it isn’t drowning, and it definitely isn’t dying. It is pure terror that eventually distills into a whisper like a sob, completely impossible in a physical sense, but still that’s how it is, a real expression made by speech organs and audible to ears: I can’t breathe!
A BRIEF LESSON ON BREATHING
Breathing, also known as respiration, occurs as if by itself thanks to the respiratory center.Those unfortunates who suffer from Ondine’s Curse, more properly a mutation of the PHOX2B gene, represent an exception.They must breathe consciously or otherwise they die. But there are very few of them in the world.
As we breathe, oxygen (O, oxygenium) moves with the air into the alveoli and from there through various molecular intermediaries to the cells. Carbon dioxide (CO2) moves from the cells back into the air.Think of a funny little red car that drives around the body transporting back and forth Mr. Oxygen and Mrs. Carbon Dioxide, who, according to the script, can’t decide where they want to be, inside or outside, because if they did that, decided and stopped inside or outside, then someone else would arrive—Death. Mr. Oxygen and Mrs. Carbon Dioxide also shouldn’t travel in the wrong direction. People who breathe carbon dioxide are in grave danger. There have even been reports of near-death experiences caused by carbon dioxide.
So the act of breathing requires i) a breather who is well equipped in the physiological sense and ii) oxygen, which is the most significant component of air after nitrogen. Other more minor constituents of air include krypton and argon, but none of these are visible to the naked eye. Fundamental to the breathing process is that a properly equipped breather need not wonder whether he or she will bother breathing again and again and again.
As can be deduced from the preceding, suicide by holding one’s breath is practically impossible. Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of the Cynical school of philosophy, succeeded, as did Girolamo, who was hopelessly in love with Silvestra in the eighth story of the fourth day of the Decameron. Others have needed the assistance of a plastic bag.
The diaphragm is located below the lungs. Shove your finger in there, and you might cause a cramp. Below the diaphragm are the liver and the stomach. During inhalation, the diaphragm contracts, descending and thus expanding the chest cavity in the direction of the belly. This creates negative pressure, and air begins to flow. As they contract, the external intercostal muscles spread the thoracic cavity forward and to the sides. Exhalation, on the other hand, happens more or less by itself as the aforementioned muscles cease contracting.
It should be noted that if we were in a near-perfect vacuum, such as in space, we could not breathe. In space we also cannot speak without auxiliary instruments. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum because there is nothing to transmit it. Although to prove this one would need an ear and a mouth in space, because otherwise the question is completely theoretical.
Let us return to respiration, or more precisely to the vital function called “lung ventilation”. Don’t bother thinking of an open door on a French balcony unless you can also think of a volume measurement gauge near the door. During a twenty-four hour period, a well-equipped breather breathes approximately ten thousand liters of air. The volume of a single breath is about one half liter. An experienced yogi can circulate as many as five liters through his body at once. So the air can be measured in liters, like strawberries or peas. This can be a little difficult to understand, but just try blowing in a plastic bag sometime.
There are various opinions about how many times a breather who is sufficiently well equipped and in a state of rest breathes in the space of one minute. Some say fourteen to sixteen times, while others claim eight to eighteen times. This divergence of opinion stems from the fact that the concept of “state of rest” is very much open to interpretation, let alone how many matters of interpretation are involved when referring to “sufficiently well equipped” breathers. There is also reason to point out that when scholars utter figures, talking about liters or times, in their minds they picture the average adult male, not children, women, infants, the elderly, the sick, yogis, elite athletes, or wind instrumentalists.
The pseudostratified epithelium covers the respiratory tract. The cilia of the pseudostratified epithelium sway in waves during respiration. Mucus moves around on them, among other things. The cells are covered in mucus. Now imagine a mucus car, perhaps also red, moving toward the throat. The swallowing reflex carries the mucus car to the stomach. Moving along the pseudostratified epithelium with quite a sense of direction, the mucus
