Day Nein!

Yesterday wasn’t too bad. At work I was quite physically active, and my lungs were keeping up with me. The crud has been dissappating, and for that I am very happy. Still having coughs in the mornings, but that’s to be expected after a night’s sleep. Still having bronchial spasms and chest tightness; sometimes it happens when I stretch my chest out. :shrugs: Every now and then the quitter’s flu pops up with that sick feeling, and my head’s sinus cavities are still messed up from non-exposure to smoke, but if this is my body’s way of dealing with getting rid of eight years’ worth of toxins, then I welcome it.

I do have a confession, though. Yesterday, since I worked my ass off at work, I felt like I should reward myself with a cigarette. I told my friend BC3 about my plan, and he was about to slap me silly until I sat down and decided against it. Well, last night I made the decision to borrow a cigarette and I smoked it in two shifts. Before you lynch me, listen to me: after not having a smoke in 9 days (a stupendous feat if you ask me), while smoking that cigarette I totally forgot why I started smoking. That damned thing was harsh, the smoke was really thick and choking, and the nicotine rush was really dizzying and left me with a headache. After nic-fitting for 9 days, after that smoke I really don’t want any more for a long time. The experience was rather lackluster. :sighs: Some would say that was a good thing, yes?

I woke up this morning from a long slew of really weird dreams (having those a lot lately — I blame altered neurochemistry) and had a small cough. Still have a small headache, but I’ve been having that for the past few days at the least. Having some wasabi peas to see if I can get some of my sinus stuff to drain.

I’m still looking forward to the day when my non-smoking is not a topic of conversation. Give it a few weeks or months; it’ll be fine. We’ll see what today, day ten, holds.

w.d 1.1

One thing I will admit is that I’m seriously craving a smoke lately. Something tells me I’m probably dealing with secondary physical withdrawals. Shit. Actually, right now I’m dealing with a tight chest, again. This has been an ongoing thing, every damned day for the past month or longer. Getting tired of it. Seriously.

Tonight, though, I’m going through periods alternating from nicotine craving to chest tightness, each lasting about a half hour. And it’s been like this all day. Where the hell was this chest tightness yesterday, when I was at the cardiologist’s office, huh? Shit. Well, if you take this tightness, throw in some random, lagging “flu-like” feelings, some dizziness and some stomach upsets, and mix it all up for good measure, you have what I’m feeling. Yep. Another Shawn-fueled panic attack.

And yes, as predicted, I’m starting to get irritable. Quite irritable. Not quite irritable enough to snap someone’s head off, just enough to get annoyed and pissed at little things. Yep. These are tough times.

And I really, really should stop this bitching. It’s pissing me off. Seriously. Um, yeah, fuck you too.

One Week

Can you believe it’s only been one week since I quit smoking?

My lungs are kinda clearing up from the quitter’s flu, but they’re still tight in the center. I’m taking some guaifenessin before bedtime, and using my albuterol inhaler when it’s needed, so my breathing is under control. Making some good progress in the coughing and hacking thing, too; every cough brings me closer to better breathing.

So, what have I learned in this past week? Phfththfhthpht, I dunno. I know that I can survive quite well without smoking; I know that I have a nature that allows addiction; I know that telling people that I’ve quit smoking gets a lot of happy, positive responses, but every time they see me my non-smoking and their smoking are always the topic of conversation. There is nothing else to talk about, really, as long as people are still smoking, and drinking, and taking drugs, and having premarital sex, and extramarital sex, and voting Democrat, and not using cable TV, and when people are doing all that while driving. sighs As a country we’re not having fun anymore — we’re headed to Conservativeland; apparently these past two decades of special-concerns groups throwing scare tactics at the general public have finally scared us sober, straight, and clean … and homogenous, and dull, and uninteresting. There’s nothing else to talk about in life; it’s all about my non-smoking. Yep.

sighs

So, after having a pack a day (on average) for the past eight years, going without a single cigarette for a full week has been an exercise; I’m still seriously craving one. I’ve gotten praise for my duration, but it doesn’t take too much resolve, really, when I’m quitting for my own health. I scared myself sober. And the fact that I didn’t start smoking until I was 23 allows me plenty of memories and habits from the days when I was still a pinklung; I have a reference point to gauge my lifestyle.

Just so long as I can get my lungs back in good shape so I can live like I did back then without running out of breath.

Cause I’m Radioactive!

Poked, prodded, stuck, bled, shaved, scraped, patched, shot up, scanned, pushed, run to death. A night on Sixth Street? An evening in the LAPD hotel? A bad time in a Tijuana brothel? Nope.

I had my stress test yesterday.

I went in for my 1pm appointment at a local cardiovascular specialist office for my nuclear stress test. In a nutshell, this kind of test involves radioactive dyes and a little bit of exercise. They brought me in, shot me up with a radioactive isotope drug (the gamma-ray dosage was much less than a typical X-ray) which binds to my heart muscles. After a 30-minute break, to give the drug enough time to find my heart, where I read some angry literary bitterness from Henry Rollins, I was laid down on a sensor machine and slid into this set of rings which contained these huge boxes loaded with sensors. I had to get really comfy, because for the next 15 minutes I had to remain motionless. Thankfully, it was over sooner than I had thought.

After the scan, I went to another room where my chest was shaved in patches with one of those single-use razors they love to use in operating rooms (the guy was kinda rough). Then he swabbed the shaved patches with rubbing alcohol and followed it up with something resembling 400-grit sandpaper. Oouuuch. Apparently this was to make my skin completely conductive for the ton of sensor patches that were stuck on me. (Regardless of all the shaving, some hair was *still* pulled when those were taken off.) I was wired up to the EKG machine, everything worked and checked out, then the doctor came in to monitor the machine while I worked out on the treadmill.

Clunk! “Ooh, that wasn’t a good sound,” said the Doc. The first treadmill we tried was broken. Crap. I had to be taken to another room and get wired up again for a different treadmill. :sighs: At least this corner room had a much better view of the scene around the office tower.

The treadmill started out at 1.7 mph at a 10% incline. That was equivalent to a decent walk down the street, and this stage lasted for about four minutes. Then the treadmill got a little more difficult – it sped up and the incline stepped up to 12.5% grade. This went on for two more “stages” where by the time my heartrate reached the target of 160 beats per minute I was running up a serious hill. It was at that point that the doc injected me with a final dose of isotope and needed me to run for one more minute. This is to make sure the drug gets a good circulation through my bloodstream.

Off the treadmill, the physician’s assistant removed all but three of the EKG pads and took the IV out of my arm. I was then sent into the break room to eat the high-fat lunch I was told to bring, which I did gladly and with much gusto after having to fast for six hours before this test. Mmmm. Reheated Sonic burger and tots.

After lunch, I had to lay down on the sensor again, this time for a shorter session. The EKG was attached, I was slid into the rings, and this time I managed to lay with my head turned enough to see the computer monitor. What I saw was pretty interesting – after every small motion of the sensors around my chest, the computer would accumulate more scans together into a final image for that angle. When the sensors moved again, the process repeated. It was really interesting seeing inside my chest; looked kind of like a ghostly glow shot with a security cam in low light. And it doesn’t matter that I’m at a cardiology specialist’s office, my geekhood still rides high because as I’m looking at the scanner’s monitor I noticed that according to the look of the “widgets” on the graphical interface the computer was running Gnome on some version of X-Windows (Linux or Unix) or plain-ol’ Microsoft Windows using a Gnome widget library. Heh.

When the second test was done, the docs helped me up, disconnected me from the machine, shook my hand and told me to expect a call later this week for the interpretation. From everything I heard and gathered, my heart was acting normally for them. Everything was normal. But the interpretation of the many EKG readings while under stress and while at rest, and the interpretation of the images from my chest, may tell the doctors something different. I dunno.

Last night I took some pleasure in explaining to my buddies that I was full of gamma-ray radiation. Should’ve seen the looks and the backpedalling.

Time to get ready for work. Later.

Days Five and Six

Oh, man. Quitter’s Flu sucks ass. Since sunday my lungs have been in a constant cruddy tightness. Overdosing myself on water and watery drinks, trying to stay overhydrated so this phlegm will have enough body to expectorate. Gross, yeah. Guaifenessin caplets, work harder. Damn.

I’m still craving, believe me I’m still craving. It’s not really so much a physical craving anymore – although that does rear its ugly head every now and then. The craving is more psychological. I’m at my computer now, and I keep feeling like doing nothing more than lighting one up; this spot was were I did a lot of smoking. Believe you me that I’m trying everything possible to “repurpose” this area of my room — if I feel like lighting one up, I pick up my peppermints instead. It’s funny that I’m not sucking on them as much, but I’m biting more than anything. Yeah, psychocraving. It’s getting to where any time I physically crave (or otherwise), if I want to feel that “good ol’ lung-clinchin'” that only smoking cigarettes can provide, I do nothing more than get a good cough out, and my lungs are reminded of that feeling once more, but without the carginogenic side effects.

I had this funky-assed dream last night; this’ll illuminate some more of my psychocrave for you. I dreamed that I “cheated” on my nonsmoking and had three cigarettes over the course of the night, and I felt so bad about it I confessed on this column. I can assure you that I can’t smoke cigarettes that I don’t have when I’m asleep, which is a relief, but if I do have a smoke in the near future, before I can confidently say I’ve kicked the addiction, then I think I can be forthright enough to say I’ve done so here. You can “tsk tsk” if you want, you can just say, “Well, he’s done good so far”, or you can plain flat-out ignore it. I’m usually too honest and open for my own good; this column would be no different.

Three dream cigarettes in my sleep. Damn. No wonder my lungs feel so tight. Heh. Special note: Wednesday night around 12:30am will mark my first week as a recovering smoker. Gawd. It’s a definite milestone, yes, but I seriously hope I stay a nonsmoker and don’t descend into the role of antismoker. Those people, and other dung-flingers, are pretty low in the social pyramid, and low is not where I wish to be.