Victorious - a Column by Brad Dell

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers of the film “Sound of Metal.” I yearn for the days I drew close, very close, to death. Each thought, emotion, and sight weighed heavy. And each breath was precious; who knew if there’d be another? I’d become deaf, and silence became…

It’s not my birthday or my lung transplant anniversary or anything. But today, I’m thinking about being old-ish. I’m thinking about how Mom realized my life expectancy in college biology, and how I realized it in middle school biology. I’m thinking about the times I drove myself nuts by…

I’ve been in love. It was magnificent. It also hurt. Love belongs among the most powerful building blocks of our cosmos. Passion drives creation, compassion nurtures it. Blend the two for love. Tragically, I’ve found that adding a sick body to the mix can threaten the balance. Passion wanes as…

I’ve often written that “the disease itself isn’t the worst part, rather it’s the …” The medication side effects, the childhood trauma, the dread, the blah, blah, blah. Today, it’s the social exclusion. Post-transplant, I’m not very excluded. Sure, I can’t eat sushi with my friends, and most…

At the start of November, I was infected with COVID-19. My heart rammed repeatedly and rapidly against my sternum, which had been broken four years earlier by lung transplant surgeons. I was dizzy, reeling from the local health department’s phone call informing me of my exposure to a person with…

Two months ago, I watched myself die, then get resurrected on television. Sort of. I used to interview fascinating people in Hawaii for local magazines. I’d never imagined I’d be profiled, much less through a documentary. But there I was, featured in a Bay Area NBC segment titled “…

People often declare my life to be stranger than fiction. (It’s true, and it’s both a blessing and a curse.) Usually, that observation is followed by an urging for me to write a memoir. I reply that I’ve tried, but simply don’t know how to end it. I can’t tie…

I should’ve died years ago, but I’m too damn competitive. A doctor said I’d cross my high school graduation stage in a wheelchair, toting supplemental oxygen. “Challenge accepted,” I thought. Weeks later, I walked with my head held high and unobstructed by oxygen tubing. When I lost my mind due…

I had imagined that everything would move at light speed once I got the call for my lung transplant. Instead, it was a peaceful wait of about 23 hours in the hospital. I pondered what I wanted my “last” meal to be (strawberry yogurt, nachos, rice), tried to be present…

In 2013, miles above the Pacific, flight attendants and passengers stared silently as a man yelled — literally yelled — at me for coughing too much. In meltdown mode, he didn’t care for my explanations that I have a noncontagious lung disease, nor that cough suppressants make me sick.