In several Asian cultures, the Crane is a symbol of longevity. The ancient Greeks and Romans were impressed with the "dances" of cranes, seeing them as expressions of the love of joy and life. Early Christian writers associated the bird with vigilance, loyalty, and goodness.

This is the beginning of the story, not the end. Like all areas of knowledge, the more one knows, the more one finds that there's still more to know. And the answers one gets lead to questions one doesn't yet know to ask.

It has been about three and a half years since my wife, Carol, came down with PH. It was a sudden and drastic assault. She was well, and then she was sick. Very Sick.

Within a few days of consulting a fine pulmonologist for recent shortness of breath, Carol was in the ICU with a Swan-Ganz catheter in her neck. She took oral calcium channel blockers (CCB's) and we watched her pulmonary pressure monitor for signs of response. We were in the land of beeps, flashes, and green oscilloscope waves. Response to the pills meant "life;" non-response would result in a visit from the hospital chaplain, we were told.

The senior Pulmonologist gave her an 85% chance of leaving the planet within the next few months. He wasn't discussing a NASA voyage.

But the minority party, the 15% prevailed. Response to the CCB was obvious. At the end of a week tethered to the bed, the prisoner was released with a bottle of pills and the more hopeful prospect that the whole thing would blow over. As the toxic diet-drug left her system and the heart pills dilated those pinched little arterioles, the PH would be "reversed."

Several months of clear functional improvement corroborated by echocardiograms that looked better and better threw gas on the flame of hope. She was going to "get well."

Then came the nagging feeling that breathing wasn't so good anymore. An echo confirmed what the patient already knew. Wait a month. See how it goes. Remeasure. Once. Twice. Still worse.

The old Pulmonologist pronounced the situation beyond his expertise and referred us to a junior colleague who specialized in this very disease. He looked grim. He was sending us to the specialist who would supervise her death march.

We met with the specialist. He'd seen it before. The reversibility of diet-drug PH was an incorrect belief. But so was the concept that if you weren't cured you were as good as dead. PH is a "CHRONIC" disease, he said. You're not about to die any time soon, but you aren't going to get well either. There are treatments beyond CCB's.

We had to shift into a new mode of thought. This thing is here to stay. While we look to the future for a genuine cure we must settle in for the long haul of palliative therapy.

Long hauls, with ups and downs; crises and their aftermath; new medicines that bring improvements and further loss at the same time: this is life in the trenches of WWI. A quick and furious encounter with the enemy, a brush with death, followed by the victory of a month in the "safety" of a long hole in the ground, waiting for the next assault.

I believe that everyone here at PHCentral could tell you a similar story. It's not an accident that someone is mining the medical literature, someone else is immersed in books on folklore, finding a symbol like the crane that expresses the same positive meanings across many cultures, and another is polishing the site graphics. This is our therapy, our easing of our own pain in a way that benefits others.

Each soldier in this war has chosen a kind of work that feels right. Some of us are "salesman," with a gift for talking money out of potential donor pockets. Others are artists who can depict what others know but cannot express. There is an infinite number of talents all of which can be put to use. As you browse this site, ask yourself "what do I like to do?" Write to us about it.

The following is a set of brief excerpts from the story of Bruno Betelheim, renowned child-therapist, who spent several years in TWO Nazi concentration camps. His experience has served as a model to me.

When I first collected and examined my thoughts on the camps, to prepare them for publication, it was easy to say that I wished to publish them because they dealt with important problems which to my knowledge, had never before come to public attention. But this was not my original motive. Inside the camps I did not study my behavior, nor did I study my fellow prisoners or question them because I intended to make a disinterested survey of a problem that had roused my scientific interest. Quite the contrary: not detached curiosity, but vital self-interest induced me to study my own behavior and the behavior I noticed around me. To observe and try to make sense out of what I saw was a way of convincing myself that my own life was still of some value, that I had not yet lost all the interests that had once given me self respect. This, in turn, helped me to endure life in the camps.

...

Thus my interest in trying to understand what was going on psychologically is an example of a spontaneous defense against the impact of an extreme situation. It was individually conceived, was neither enforced by the SS nor suggested by other prisoners, and was based on my particular background and training. Although at first I was only dimly aware of this, it was meant to protect me from a disintegration of personality I dreaded. Like other types of private behavior that arose among prisoners, as distinct from responses common to all of them, it followed the path of lease resistance; that is, it followed closely some of my former main interests.

...

My interest in observing how other prisoners and I had changed, now merged with my efforts to find out which prisoners invented rumors and why, and what that did to them. Soon I realized I had found a solution to my main problem: by occupying myself whenever possible with problems that interested me, by talking with my fellow prisoners and comparing impressions. I was able to feel I was doing something constructive and on my own. It also offered great relief during the hours without end when we were forced to perform exhausting labor that asked for no mental concentration. To forget for a time that I was in the camp, and to know that I was still interested in what had always held my interest before, seemed at first the greatest advantage of my efforts. As time went on, the renewed self-respect I felt because I was managing to occupy myself in ways that were meaningful to me, became even more valuable than the pastime.

Betelheim, Bruno (1960), The Informed Heart. Free Press: Glencoe, Ill.