Collectively Wise

Addiction, Illness and Cigarettes

[Anonymous Personal Story]

Everyone knows that quitting smoking greatly improves your health. They fail to inform the innocent bystanders of loved ones who smoke what sort of ordeals they will be put through.

This past year, my mother, whom was born in 1956, was diagnosed with COPD and emphysema. I am a twenty five year old, who is married and has a two-year old daughter. At the time, we were renting a large farmhouse in Maryland. Life happened as it always does, and I took my mother into my home because she needed a place to stay. I knew she was a pack a day smoker, but at my house she was only allowed to smoke outside.

A Lifetime of Asthma

I remember having a cat.  Her name was Meeno.  We lived in an apartment at the time, and she was always indoors.  She was my cat.  I was 6.

Then I remember the upper back pain.  If I didn't move, I didn't need much air.  My back muscles were strained from the extra effort of trying to open up my airways.  This memory is from a little later in life. Maybe I was 10.  At that point, we had a dog.  We also lived in Chicago, where everyone stays indoors, for months at a time.

I was used to the inability to breathe.  I just really wanted someone to massage the muscles in my back.

I spent a lot of time sitting still.  I also have a theory that a lack of oxygen and being forced to sit still helped me excel in math.  Click.  Click.  Click.  Click.  It was like a sound in my brain.  As an alternative to air, I stuffed food into my body.  It really made me feel like something was getting in, and I was craving that.