okay…. so I’m not a perfect person

After all that has happened in the past week, I haven’t smoked for (like) 6 days. Before that, but while still trying to get over Pneumonia, I’d have a few drags of a cigarette to take the edge off a little… which in no way means I was smoking a pack a day since being diagnosed almost 3 weeks ago.

Please hold off on the lectures about smoking & being sick. It has been hard enough on me going cold turkey while being hospitalized for the past couple of days, because that is basically what I did, going into the hospital for a second time was no smoking and no patches. I have been flipping a bitch-switch on about everyone and everything.

Tonight I broke. I had a couple of drags of a cigarette, and to be perfectly honest… it made me sick-feeling. A little dizziness, a little light headed and the brand of cigarettes I normally smoked daily tasted horrible. I got a headache almost instantly.

And then I started thinking about it all. Most doctors will blame an in-grown toe nail on smoking just to get people to quit. I found this doc online, and I’m glad that I did, because it confirms some of what I’ve said, that smoking doesn’t cause Pneumonia. And non-smokers get and/or are treated for Pneumonia the same way.

I didn’t know what I would hope to have gained by lighting up a cigarette tonight. Possibly the feeling I had prior to being sick, that normal feel-good feeling I had a month ago. But you know what? Very few have enouraged me to continue not smoking vs. the “intervention” style approaches & lectures of others. All of this stressfulness is just too much for a person like me who is used to doing things my own way & on my own terms.

This blog has meant many things to me, and this post is another chapter of what it’s like being “fed-up” and I hope some of what I wrote makes sense to the ones who care (or say they care) about me.

It’s been a very long day, so Good night all.

Last year at this time….

It’s hard to imagine that at about this time last year I was calling a relative in Florida to let her know it was snowing in Buffalo. I was so cheerful about it, little did I know what the rest of the night would amount to.

We woke up to this around our house:

streetview.JPG

drivewayview.JPG

modus operandi

4 days more were spent back in the hospital. More test, more blood work, more x-rays….. all the same stuff I went through 2½ weeks ago. This time was different though.

It was determined that there was too much fluid and my lung and it really needed to come out. So I was prepped for a procedure where (never, ever believe a well-dressed doctor who says “it’s a piece of cake”). A needle was stuck into my back, then lung. The process took about 20 minutes and I cried the whole time. It felt like child birthing w/o any medical sedation. When it was all over, almost 2 liters of fluid had been extracted from my chest.

It was mentioned that I may have been sick for some time and it final broke when it did.

So, thank you to all my friends and readers who have been check back with me and sending lots of well wishes. It’s going to take me some time to get better, for the time being, I’m here now.

I want to say a special thanks to Michele Johnson for her phone call & kind words the other evening. She is the biggest sweetheart one could ever know.

Hugs to Mike for the trees. ;)