I hate smoke (Warning...this is a major venting session!)

Well, here it is, Thursday. I've been sick since Sunday morning and have missed out on work all week except for the 2.5 hours when I came in to teach on Tuesday. I'm sick of being sick! I've called into my OB again to see what, if anything, they can do. I'm already taking Robitussin DM, Sudafed, Benadryl, and my albuterol inhaler every four hours in addition to my normal regimen of baby aspirin, metformin, zantac, and azmacort. All these drugs can't be good for Nicholas! They're all on the approved list, but taking so much all the time still doesn't seem like a good idea. Unfortunately without all of it I can't seem to breathe or sleep at all, which isn't good either. My OB just called and they're calling in a prescription for an antibiotic for me. They're worried this is going to turn into a sinus infection and bronchitis. Great. More drugs!

AND I just have to take this opportunity to vent about the reason I'm sick in the first place! Saturday and Sunday I walked around the Micanopy Fall Festival. Exercise, fresh air, what could be better for me and the baby? WELL apparently SOME people think that any outdoor venue gives them the RIGHT to smoke whatever they want. Now, I understand it's outdoors. BUT it was really very crowded. A lot of people in a relatively small space. Everywhere I went I was always catching a whiff, and sometimes a lot more than a whiff of cigarette smoke. Even cigar smoke a time or two! YUCK! Of course I tried to get away from it every time I caught the first whiff, and I'm very attuned to that odor so I'd usually smell it before Tom or JM could. But it was still getting into my lungs.

I'm so sick of having to dodge these smokers! They hang right outside of buildings on campus, walk the sidewalks in their stinking clouds. Congregate in common areas, walk around like it's their RIGHT to smoke as long as it's outdoors. Now, I'm completely grateful that I live in a state that restricts smoking in all public buildings, including shopping centers, malls, and restaurants. It helps me to be able to go places I would otherwise have to avoid. BUT I do have to walk into the mall, past the crowd of smokers. I do have to enter and exit my workplace and the other buildings on campus, through a crowd of smokers. I have to walk on the sidewalks, stop at the corners for traffic and stop at traffic lights, often in the company of smokers! It's insidious! I can't get away from it even though I personally not only choose not to smoke, but I'm very sensitive and desperately allergic to it! I've been sick for an entire week this time! Usually this keeps me out of work or school for two weeks, and even then the cough can linger all winter!

Why do I have to suffer because some people CHOOSE to kill themselves with tobacco? I understand that they think they have the right to choose to smoke. If they want to destroy their own bodies (and the bodies of the people they live with) FINE! Go ahead! BUT I really resent that their CHOICE is killing ME! AND endangering MY loved ones! I can tell you right now I don't want my child getting so much as a whiff of tobacco smoke. How am I going to protect him from it? Should I, and others who choose not to smoke, have to go around in plastic bubbles to avoid it? I suggest that the ones who are doing the smoking should have to be inside a bubble, then they can have all the smoke all to themselves and not pollute the air the rest of us are trying to breathe! Smoke in your own house, in your own car (with the windows up!) and keep it to yourselves.

I just don't think smokers know how much their habit is affecting others! Yesterday, on the way home from my glucose tolerance test, we had the windows down driving home. It was a beautiful day. There was some traffic on Archer road, as usual, and we ended up stuck in traffic passing and being passed by this same guy in a huge black pickup truck. His cigarette in his hand, hanging out the window, right by me. Tom saw it and rolled up the windows on my side of the car. He knew to do it because even though that guy is in his own vehicle, the amount of smoke that comes out of his mouth and window, and off that cigarette that was hanging about 3-4 feet away from me was too much smoke! People either just don't know how much their smoking is affecting others, or worse, they just don't care! I understand that they are addicted and feel the NEED to smoke. But give me and others who aren't a break! When you smoke in your car with the windows down in traffic, every car you pass if their windows are down or their air vents are on, you're exposing them to your cancerous habit. When you live in an apartment complex and smoke outside, or heck even inside with the windows down, you're exposing your neighbors to your smoke if they are sitting on their porch, coming out their door, or have their own windows open. If you're outside in a public place, walking on the sidewalk, strolling in the park, standing outside a building's entrance or exit, you're affecting every person walking by you. I can't even tell you how hard it is to hold your breath as you pass every smoker in public.

And this is only talking about relative strangers. I remember vividly, many times being in the backseat of the car with a relative who was smoking. The window right next to the smoker would be cracked just enough to let them tap out their ashes and keep the car from completely being so filled with smoke that you couldn't see. But I remember being in the back seat, my lungs and nose burning, my eyes watering, trying to sink my face down into my collar so I could try to filter some of the smoke out with my clothing without drawing the attention of the adults in the front seat. I knew they'd be angry if I complained about the smoke, think I was being 'smart' with them, or disrespectful. I can't even count the number of hours of this torture I had to go through as a child. It kills me now when I see someone smoking in their car with a baby or young children in the car with them.

Anyway, I just needed to vent a bit. I can't be at work right now because I'm so sick and I'm sooo bored of being at home! I don't see why my life has to be so impacted by people who are choosing to destroy their own bodies. I can only say that I'll be doing everything in my power to make sure Nicholas doesn't ever have to deal with tobacco smoke. I hope he never chooses to smoke himself. It will definitely be one of those things we teach him constantly from the time he's little. The same way you teach them about washing their hands after they go to the bathroom, brushing their teeth before bed, and being kind to animals.

Do they even realize how much their habit affects others? I have to be careful in everything I do because of my sensitivity to smoke, but if I can be affected then others are being affected to. Maybe not to the same degree, but if smoker's residue in a hotel room, in an apartment, in a used car affects me, there is something left behind long after the smoker is gone. It's horribly insidious. It gets into everything. One of my horrible 2week coughing episodes was brought on by nothing more than having a smokers clothes in a closed closet in the room where I was sleeping! I wasn't even able to stay in the room the entire night. By 2am I was up coughing and had to try to sleep sitting up in the living room.

Anyway, I don't know that I'm trying to accomplish anything with this rant. (Yep, what started as a vent has definitely turned into a rant.) But I just suffer so much from being exposed to tobacco smoke, and I'm not the only one out there affected this way. Maybe someone will see this and think twice about starting smoking, consider quitting, or at least consider those around them when they choose to smoke. I actually smoked myself for about two years total when I was a teenager. I must not have been addicted that badly because it wasn't that hard to give it up for me. I understand that others can have a harder time getting free of their addiction. But I still look forward to the day that cigarettes are outlawed, or at least only allowed where they can't affect others. It amazes me how they seem to take breathing for granted.

Every time I get sick like this and I see a smoker I can't help but think "I wish they had to struggle for breath, coughing so hard that every chest muscle is sore, and every labored breath feels sharp, like breathing razorblades." But then I remember that that's exactly how they are going to feel. Lung cancer, black lung, emphysema... it's not a pretty way to die. So, I actually don't wish it on anyone, but I hope that maybe if they knew what it is really like for someone like me, maybe they'd quit that much sooner. Before they DO know what it feels like.