Waiting to Inhale

This is my old familiar friend, the albuterol inhaler. I used to carry one of these around with me all the time to deal with both allergy and exercise induced asthma. Well, I think I may have gotten to the bottom of this whole panic attack thing. The doctor I saw on Thursday gave me a new inhaler but told me that if I was having panic attacks then the inhaler would make them worse, so I have not been using it. Well, on Saturday, I was having a bit of labored breathing and decided to try the inhaler. In fact, I found that I could breathe again. It seems that perhaps my quitting smoking has brought back my asthma. The combination of stress, allergies and my lungs purging themselves of crud has gotten me to this place of having trouble breathing. The trouble breathing is causing me to have panic attacks. So, I am back to carrying around this little friend and hopefully I have found the root of the problem, so that I can tackle the world unhindered by a lack of air and a feeling of panic.

Day 26

I have not had a cigarette for 26 days.
However, I'm now on anxiety medication.
Life is a give and take. Time to explore new ways
of releasing my tension.

A Slow Day For News

Nothing of any importance must have happened today. I clicked on CNN's Website to see if anything had exploded or if there was some new strain of goat flu perhaps. Maybe Miley Cyrus had gotten a tattoo or Paris Hilton had stopped using the word hot to describe everything. What I discovered from my brief adventure in pointing and clicking my way toward pounding a few nails in print journalism's coffin was that one of CNN's top headlines was "Dog Eats Bag of Pot, Gets High".

It's great to know that CNN is tackling the really important stories that shape all of our lives. It's thought provoking journalism like this that restores my faith in the integrity of mainstream news.