Consider The Source

With Earth Day in mind, I've lately been looking back at my time here on planet Earth, (right in time with the stages of life the sociologists and psychologists say I'm supposed to go through at this age), and I have been taking inventory of my experiences and trying to figure out if I've learned anything from them.

Once, when I was young, I had a vision. I was twelve, and I was asleep in bed and I woke to see a tall, dark woman with long dark hair standing at the foot of my bed. She didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything to her, and she faded out of sight. It wasn't scary, and the words "the red way," came to me and kind of stayed with me. The next morning my mother told me it was probably my great-great grandmother, who was Metis. It wasn't until many years later in college, when I felt compelled to pursue some Native American studies, one of the things to come out of my readings was this concept of "the lesson." The older I got, the more references I found to the concept. And I ran across the phrase "the red way," discovering it referred to a Native concept of living one's life, and to be thankful for the lessons. 

I spent many years trying to figure out what my "red way" was, as I am Metis also. I thought if life is for learning lessons, what have I learned? I mean, really, besides how to do emergency repairs on ventilators and balance my checkbook. I have to say that one of the most important lessons I can ever remember learning I got from one of my Journalism teachers, Mr. McCauley. 

The lesson was "consider the source."

I cannot begin to tell you how many times that simple directive, once considered, has made a major impact on my life. That small phrase has transformed a whole host of incidents too tiny to even remember. At the time, muttered by an elderly man with gray and white, fly away hair, it seemed an innocuous statement, almost a no-brainer, but I wrote it down dutifully in my Copyreading and Editing notes. It was one that really, I had never considered before. And thankfully, I've never forgotten it.

I didn't realize it at the time, but Mr. McCauley saved my life. Always prone to have a bit of trouble with self-esteem, that phrase was like a lifesaver thrown to a drowning woman. No more was I prey to those who hunt out and stalk women with poor self-esteem. I was making some mistakes, but my eyes were opening. Wait a minute! Consider the source!

I started applying it to daily issues. For instance commercialism. We are supposed to do our jobs, which is to consume. We go to work, get money, spend and consume something. To this end, we are bombarded by TV and radio ads urging us to buy this vitamin, or that beauty product. Advertising worms its way into our most private moments. If it doesn't get us, it gets our children. Keeping up with the status quo becomes the paramount goal of parent and child alike, causing us to take jobs that take us away from our families at night, and for long hours at a time, subjecting us to unrelenting stress that sneaks into our marriages, relationships, and health. I felt fine before I turned the TV on, but now I realize I'm getting a double chin, I've got gray hair, and surely there must be other things wrong with me. Wait a minute! Consider the source!

Rev. Wright, Obama's preacher, said it succinctly on TV the other night. When asked how he felt about what Obama had said about him, the reverend matter of factly replied, oh, Obama's a politician. He has to do what a politician does. Here is a man who has been the spiritual leader of a man who wants to be our president, and he passes Obama off like an afterthought. I don't like what he said about my country. Seems to me if he truly cared about changing America for the better, he'd be a little bit more supportive of Obama, given he's his spiritual leader and all. Consider the source.

Consider the source. What a great slide rule. What a great concept. What's the purpose, what's the agenda, who gains and who loses? What's the real motivation. It's not a guarantee against bad decisions, but it can shed a little light on the situation.

So, after all this time, my hat's off to you, Mr. McCauley. I do appreciate the little newsman's tip you gave me. It's the best advice I can give to anybody. And with that in mind, consider the source.

King Coal

I am reminded that some time ago a representative from Peabody Energy Company contacted me wanting my cooperation in leasing our land for gas and oil on my family's home place in Leslie County. They would pay us to rent the land, which would be a great source of income for my aunt and uncle. His presentation was slick and rehearsed, with many dropped hints about much revenue we (my father's heirs) could expect to collect from royalties. Imagine my surprise when a family member informed me that, indeed, Peabody is drilling for oil and gas in Leslie County -- however they are capping the wells and have no plans to extract any oil or gas at this time. They are choosing NOT to produce any fuel. They're just holding on to the land.

Our subjectivity to King Coal in this state is sad. The new buzz word regarding coal, is "clean electricity." But when it comes to coal, there is NO such thing as "clean" electricity. It does not matter how many cleaners you force the air through. When you have strip-mined coal, you have single-handedly supported the subjugation of an entire populace of people, their ecology, history, and the complete devastation of a rare and delicate ecosystem that can never be "reclaimed." From the devastated faces of the family members of coal miners buried alive to the land and waterways fouled from the drift and sludge pond overflows, coal is a filthy energy source for Kentuckians and everyone else, and we need to acknowledge that fact. Every time we turn on an electrical appliance, we need to remember where that electricity is coming from and the true cost it takes in human lives, health and our environment.

Coal is great for the economy. Aren't we told that as well? Well the people of the community should benefit, right? I mean all that money in the area? The elderly people in that community travel at least one county, if not two or three, down twisting, winding roads, in order to receive quality health care above the competent one in Hyden. It's the same in other coal-producing counties. There are some sections of the area that have an economy less than many third world countries. It doesn't employ a lot of people to strip-mine coal. Not enough to make any difference in the economy. 

Coal in Kentucky involves a brutal history of graft and politics, senseless death and dismemberment, disease and generational poverty, all shoved down the throat of a populace that has been exploited, maligned, ridiculed and discounted despite their incredible contributions to our lives and culture. I can speak personally from my experiences as a respiratory therapist. In many in-services involving pulmonary lung function testing for Black Lung, we are cautioned about those "hillbillies" trying to "deceive" Medicaire and Medicaid by "faking" their test results for black lung benefits. As far as I'm concerned every coal miner who has spent any significant amount of time in the minds should qualify for Black Lung. These people are soldiers. They do a horrible job for a lifetime for our ability to turn on the lights, and they live out their lives with compromised lungs and disease as a result. That the government should turn their backs on them after a life time of service, is not surprising, but it is appalling. There is no reason they should not be considered civil servants also, and subject to their benefits.

You would think that an occupation as dangerous as coal mining would be under the strictest safety guidelines imaginable. But recently it took a huge effort on the part of several environmental and human interest groups to keep some extremely basic mining safety requirements (e.g. for instance that the foremen and women have basic CPR skills) on the table for legislation. OSHA, who is the bane of every hospital's corporate compliance office, seems to have turned a blind eye to coal mining. The EPA hasn't seemed to notice that the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River is the most unnatural green I have ever seen in my entire life. We rely on these government fail-safes to guard the health and lives of our miners and environment, but where are they before the cave-ins, the landslides and the spills?

Fossil fuels have been passe since the 70's. The only reason alternatives have not been developed is because there are people who have a vested interest in the status quo who have prevented it. How telling is it that not one of our new presidential candidates has an energy policy that eliminates our use of fossil fuels for power! They go on and on about "clean" coal, not mentioning that it still involves raping old growth forest and fouling mountain watersheds and ways. Why should they worry? It's not in their back yard.

Many years ago a coal company showed up with a deed for my family's coal, signed with an "X," as they maintained my grandmother didn't know how to write. Odd, since she raised three teachers. These people are sleazy in their very nature. This is no golden opportunity for plentiful energy and income. This is a golden opportunity for a very few to profit at a horrific cost. I recently heard these words, "Wall Street has it's eye on Kentucky." Wall Street is looking to rip the bones and guts out of our cherished mountain land and old growth forest. Wall Street doesn't give a damn about Kentucky.

Lot's Wife

The good news is the computer is working again, and I'm restored to the net. The bad news is that it took a new hard drive to do it. Just goes to show you, you never, never know. The problem was that I was downloading an update, and the computer froze midway through. The tech folks said there was nothing I could have done. Next time, though, I will make sure I am in town with 5 green bars on my hook up. And next time I will definitely back up before I download.

As luck would have it, I had finally figured out how to use the external hard drive I had bought about 9 months ago, and I did back up at least most of my important files about a month ago. These are files that mean a whole lot to me, i.e., my writing, my music, my photos. My address book did back up, so I only lost the most recent email addresses. My new essays I have been publishing on the web, so they were still accessible. About the only thing I failed to back up was my Journal. And I'm not so sure it was a bad thing.

The last three years have not been pleasant. I lost my father in 2000, and we went through a difficult adjustment, myself and my family. There was the family farm to consider, and the running of it. My mother, at 80, rallied and did a tremendous job of stepping in to fill my father's shoes, but by 2005 she was sick with some physical problems, and heartsick, I think, missing my father. She died in March of that year despite everything I could do. 

A month later, within 2 days of each other, I lost one of my oldest friends to a car wreck, and the mobile home I'd been living in for 25 years caught fire and we almost died. I wrote about that in my piece about Jack. 

Once my mother died, it was a free for all in the family. It was a very horrible time. I opted out. I am just too tired anymore to deal with power struggles and ulterior motives and drama and all of that other crap. I actually, surprisingly, found it somewhat easy to take the money, turn around and walk away, and build myself a new farm, and a new home. I bought my Mac about three months after my mother died, installed the Journal program and wrote pretty faithfully about everything. So there was this record, and even though I hadn't ever gone back and read anything I had written, still there was that knowledge that I had written everything down. It was there, like a dark grey cloud in an otherwise blue sky.

It's not there anymore, and the strangest thing -- I feel absolutely light as air. I darn near feel like a new born babe. Just knowing all the bad stuff I had written about was gone, was the most liberating thing. I realized I never had to go back and read about it all again. There was now no way that could ever be done. It's like the sentiments were documented, expressed, and then tossed to the wind.

I woke up to a crystal blue sky today with a ton of sunlight all around, and with my morning coffee checked in with the computer. There was my horoscope for today, saying something to the effect that it was time to move on, that new things couldn't be done as long as I was still involved with things that had happened in the past. How bizarre!! It occurred to me that perhaps some other hand had somehow been involved in the computer freeze up. Odd that the only thing I really lost was the one thing that I really did not need to hold on to. And then I remembered the story of Lot's wife, that God had told her not to look back lest she become a pillar of salt. That's not the first time I'd thought about that, but it is now the first time that, with a smile on my face, I know I won't be looking back, and even can't cause there's nothing there. This is great! I don't even have the choice. I tell you, between the depression, the gray skies and the rain, I was beginning to wonder, but perhaps it's not my time for crystallizing just yet. 

Computer Down

Regretfully my laptop has taken a nosedive, which is why I just answered a comment with "anonymous." I'm on a friend's laptop writing this at this time. My laptop will be leaving me tomorrow and will be gone for about 7 to 10 days, they say, so I probably won't get to post anything during this time.

Thanks for visiting, and I'll be back as soon as I can.

Lyn

Testing for Lung Cancer

Someone asked me about testing for lung cancer, so I thought I would address that quickly. First and foremost, when talking about medical stuff, I have to say that I am not a licensed respiratory therapist in Kentucky at this time (but will be within a couple of months), and am currently licensed in the state of Ohio, as that is the last place I worked. Regardless of where I am, or am not, licensed, I have to say that I have to act under my profession's standards, one of which is that I am not allowed to practice medicine without a physician over me. So with that in mind, I have to say, your physician is the best person to talk to if you have medical concerns. I can tell you what I know of certain things, but for a proper diagnosis and treatment, you need to speak with a physician.

With that in mind, I know a little about lung cancer because it is how my father died. Believe me, between my experience as a respiratory therapist, my education, and taking care of my father, I could easily write a book about it. Very basically, though, cancers are cells that have, for one reason or another, grown out of control. There are many different types, but they are generally classified as small cell or non-small cell cancers. This covers cancers that affect the alveolar sac, the bronchials and the tissue. 

One of the insidious things about lung cancer is that there are no nerve endings in the lung tissue itself, so that you can have a tumor there the size of a grapefruit, and it won't hurt. Common symptoms prior to diagnosis of cancer are shoulder pain, a sensation of something pulling,  deviation in your trachea (your trachea moving to the right or left instead of running down the center), increased shortness of breath (due to decreased lung capacity), and coughing, either productive (including blood) or non-productive. The symptom that my father initially presented with was shoulder pain, which was misdiagnosed as "Uncle Arthur" (arthritis). 

Lung cancer, at least, causes you to lose a lot of weight, really fast.

Here we get into the practice of medicine vs. the reimbursement machine. Health insurance, medicare, medicaid, etc., wants a diagnosis before they will reimburse for a procedure. It's better to go to your doctor looking for a specific procedure and the reason for it instead of with just a bunch of vague symptoms. So if you were concerned about lung cancer, the very first thing I would tell my doctor is, I have this particular symptom, and I'm concerned about lung cancer because (history of smoking, family history or whatever), and I would like a chest x-ray, (which may or may not pick it up, but still, it's the first step). Hopefully you have a good doctor that you can be truthful with and say this.  And he, or she, will do a few procedural things in the office and then let you get an x-ray. If you don't have a good doctor, you can always go to an urgent treatment center, and complain of coughing or something to do with your lungs. They will almost always do a chest x-ray for you. 

Here is the kicker, though. The doctors will look at the x-ray, but there are professional radiologists who also do a reading, and this reading is a lot more involved than the cursory reading you would get at a doctor's office, or the UTC. It is your right, as a patient, to get a copy of that x-ray, and to get a copy of the radiologist's reading, and I would definitely do that. 

I will probably write more about being a smart patient at a later time, but that is the point I would like to make now. So, to answer the question, I would first get a chest x-ray, then get the radiologist's reading, and based on that talk with your doctor. If you don't have a good one, get one. If there is anything to be seen on the x-ray, then you would do the next step, which would be to get a cat scan or MRI. Then if there is something, a biopsy. 

Try to find a doctor who expects you to be a savvy patient. This is so important. Doctors are not gods, even though they are treated like they are. Just because they are a doctor, and maybe even an excellent doctor, if you can't be up front, honest and direct with them, then maybe they are not the doctor for you. It's your job to be critical of them, because it's your life you're putting in their hands. When I was going through respiratory school, someone once asked me, what do you call a med student who has graduated with low C grades? The answer, of course, was "Doctor." So be a critical consumer when dealing with medical issues. Access to your medical information is your right, and it would be better for you if you dealt with people who understood and respected that. 

At Home With The Blues

I read an interesting story in the news the other day -- it was classified as news of the weird, or something to that effect. It was a short little article, concise and to the point (unlike my essays), and it basically said that some people who take prozac stop taking it after a while because it makes them feel too good. Seems that feeling good is so alien to these people, that it made them horribly uncomfortable, and they couldn't take it anymore (feeling good or the prozac).

I can actually understand that. Clinical depression and I have been bedfellows for years and years now, and it's a relationship I have long given up hope of ever being divorced from. I have also taken prozac, although I don't now. It did make me feel pretty good. Actually a little too good. I wound up doing some things I pretty much wish I hadn't done now, which we won't get into here. Oh well...

I have tried to explain this malady to friends and acquaintances and very rarely see the light of understanding in their eyes. They listen to me politely but I'm pretty sure they're probably saying something like "God, Lyn, get over yourself," or "Get a grip," or "Such a Diva!!" in their minds. I'm sure they think that all I really have to do is pull myself up by own bootstraps, but if that was true, I'd be the first in line to buy a pair of boots (not owning any). It's not bootstraps that does it -- it's more like that bonk on the side of the head you get when you don't drink your V8.

Clinical depression is not about feeling sad. Unless I've just lost a parent or loved one, or pet, I rarely feel sad. It's more about really not feeling anything. It's worse than apathy. It's more like a lack of a needed spark. If you listen to the clinicians explain it, it makes perfect sense. There are synapses in your brain that your nerve impulses run through, and they need to be bathed in certain chemicals, such as serotonin, for those impulses to make the leap from one synapse to the other. In clinical depression, the person might have the serotonin bath, but it doesn't stay long enough for the impulse to get through. Thus serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, or anti-depressants such as prozac. When the bath is there, there is no signal. Or the bath leaves and here comes the signal. Everything is mismatched and delayed. Reactions, if they happen, are delayed and sluggish. Feelings, if you have them, are delayed. And the sensation of being out of body and space and time happens a lot.

Another thing that happens a lot is lack of activity. Given a quiet day with little or no outside stimuli, I have been known to sit for hours, and even as the sun goes down, never turning on a light -- just sitting there in the dark. My mind is flying through vistas of thoughts, memories, songs or other odd bits of things, and my body is catatonic, hypnotized, almost totally unable to move on it's own. My mind can beg, plead with my body to move, but it remains as still as the big rocks we keep digging up on the farm. I'm not sad. I'm not blue. I'm just "not." It takes a strong stimulus to click me out of it -- something like the dogs barking, someone at the door, or an emergent need to go to the bathroom.

Music, thank God, can break through. I've often told my close friends, if I'm lying in the hospital, and they're trying to decide whether or not to let me die, hook me up to an EEG and play music. If there's no brain activity, let me go, cause if I can't respond to music, I'm gone. Music, somehow, provides a link, maybe through stimulating endorphans, I don't know. That would be interesting to check out. Of course, another rather awkward thing happens to me when I listen to music. I become more and more incapable of maintaining conversation. Once the music is turned on, my mind tunes to it, and it becomes totally intent on following every musical riff of every instrument that is playing. My body subconsciously moves in total and complete time to the different beat of every different instrument. I begin to twitch like a live wire. It's not something I can control very easily, and at this age, I don't really want to control it anymore. I love the feeling of being taken away that it brings. Something melodic like John Mayer's Stop This Train will take me so far away from where I am that when the music stops, for a moment I don't know where I am. So it's not particularly a good thing for me at work. Especially when you work in a hospital.

There is one other strange thing that happens in these states. I find if my laptop is in the area, open and ready to go, I may actually begin writing something -- something that at first may be weird, fragmented, and make no sense whatsoever. But eventually something will come from it -- a song, a poem, an article, an idea. It's because I'm so old and learned to type when I was 12. Typing is a totally automatic thing for me, something I rarely have to think about.

So what do I do with all of this? A brain that doesn't work right? I know my process. Everybody should know their process. It is very important in everything you do. I put music on pretty quickly in the day. My laptop is always ready, and I've given myself permission to write whatever I want whenever I want to. And of course, I keep several dogs. Even if they can't find something to bark at (one of their favorite pass times), they will, from time to time, come into my office to check on me and visit, Jack slipping his long, sleek nose under my hand to force me to pet him. Time to wake up, Mom.

Smoking

I once worked at a large rehab center in Cincinnati, and there had a conversation with a nurse who confided she had recently had a heart attack and had died nine times on the table. She was trying to quit smoking because of it. (No, she said, she had never 'seen the light').
“I guess you never had to worry about quitting,” she said to me, alluding to the fact that I am a respiratory therapist.
“On the contrary,” I said. “I love to smoke.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I had to quit,” I said. I looked down at the newly waxed floor. It wasn’t a great memory.
“Well, how did you do it?,” she asked, pulling at the neck of her scrubs a little and exposing her nicotine patch. “I got this and it works some, but I still smoke a little.”
“With the patch on?” I asked. “No, no, no, not a good idea. Very, very bad, triples your chance of another heart attack.”
Up went the eyebrows again. Hadn’t they bothered to tell her?
“Well, I still get the cravings,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with them.” She paused. “How long have you been quit?”
“You know, I don’t really know,” I replied. “It’s been a while. It wasn’t like all the other times. I didn’t mark the date or anything. I just quit cold turkey.” I gave her a sad smile and added, "I still get the cravings, and still don't know what to do with them."
We chatted a few minutes more. I gave her some tips for quitting, warned her again about the danger of smoking with a patch on, and went on with my busy job – a large part of which was taking care of end stage COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) patients. I could tell she wasn’t impressed by my story, and I had not given her some magical trick that would make all of her angst and cravings go away.
But the conversation stayed with me, and there were several things it brought to mind. I remembered when a fellow RT kept emailing me about upcoming and pending legislation to ban tobacco, and I finally wrote him and told him to please stop, that I wasn’t going to join him in his fight to get tobacco banned. Yes, me, the respiratory therapist. I don’t want the government involved in my personal rights, and I don’t think it’s an issue that should be settled in the courts or through legislation.
I think legislation to ban any moral issue, with the exception of mountain top removal and child exploitation, which I believe to be criminal acts, is a waste of time. As with Prohibition, the black market will undoubtedly step in and take up the slack. In the case of tobacco, they will market cigarettes not made in the United States where the production of tobacco and the chemicals used on it are under extremely strict control, where all farmers handling those chemicals must pass certification to be able to buy and use them. There is no control of any kind over the growing practices used on tobacco that is imported. Herbicides and pesticides like DDT and Paraquat, that are no longer allowed in the US, are routinely used in other countries. It is why, as a respiratory therapist, I tell my patients, friends and family, quit if you can, but if you’re going to smoke, smoke American (or Native American).
Which brings up an interesting side point. According to traditional Native American lore, tobacco is a spirit, and probably, like most spirits, doesn’t appreciate being taken for granted and used without ceremony. Tobacco should never be mindlessly chain smoked, hanging out of somebody’s lips like drying spittle. It is strong medicine. As a native born Kentuckian I will tell you burley should be “sipped,” like fine whiskey or fine wine. If you can't enjoy it that way, then you shouldn't be smoking it. Period. But big tobacco makes sure there will be no "sipping" on cigarettes.
Why? Big tobacco is in the business of making money for big tobacco. They want to sell lots of cigarettes. They don't want you to sip it, they want you to chain smoke it, so they lace it with extra nicotine. Nicotine is about 200 times more addictive than cocaine, and it makes your brain feel so, so good. They learned a long time ago that smoking non-filter cigarettes was killing off their 40 to 50 year old customers, so they filtered their cigarettes so people would live into their 60’s and 70’s – an extra 20 years worth of cigarettes! A lot of our tried and true businesses are in the same category, e.g., most of your fast food places. News flash, they don’t care about your nutrition.
I have been a respiratory therapist (among other things), for about 14 years now, and this is my take home message. You get COPD from smoking the way most people smoke. It is an insidious condition that is comprised of three different pulmonary conditions: chronic bronchitis, emphysema and asthma. It is incurable.
Dying from COPD, from one who works with COPD patients, and has had to watch, is one of the most horrible and brutal deaths you can possibly imagine. By the end, you’ve gone into renal failure and you’re on dialysis. Medications you’ve been given to try to stop the onslaught have made you diabetic. The financial cost is staggering, especially if you don't have insurance. You and your family can lose everything you’ve ever worked for. The suffering you go through, and the suffering you cause your family and friends is horrible. It is an unimaginably slow and torturous drowning in your own secretions, trying to breathe through airways that have collapsed and to get air to places where it can’t go anymore, never being able to fully exhale. You mouth to us to let you die, because you have a breathing tube stuck down your vocal cords. You lie there in bed, unable to do anything for yourself, with tubes in all your orifices, yes, all of them. Your muscle and fat and tissue waste away so that you get horrible decubitus ulcers on your back and butt and hips that you can literally fit a fist into comfortably. Your hospital room reeks like a rotting, living corpse. You can lie this way for months, even years. Your body colonizes the foulest of bacterial infections.
Try this. Take a great, big, deep breath and hold it. Hold it until you cannot possibly hold it anymore and relish that unbelievable rush you get when you are able to exhale and empty your lungs. You can't do that with emphysema. You can't effectively exhale because carbon dioxide filled air stays trapped in the air sacs of your lungs, leaving you to feel like crap most of the time.
I have been a smoker, off and on for a very long time. I still break over. I relish the ceremony of smoking, the act of smoking. I enjoy it immensely. But I hardly ever do it anymore. Why? Because I placed my stethoscope over my own heart one day and just listened to it. Constant and steady, it was doing its job. And then I felt bad. And then I began to feel sorry for it and angry at myself. All the stupid stuff I did to myself and through it all my poor heart kept working so hard, so strong, so steady. I have a heart, a poor, hard-working, fist-sized beating heart! And if nobody else in the whole world cares, I do.
Smoking is an issue that has a little to do with genetics – there is a gene that codes for addictive behaviors – but it is largely an issue that has to do with your own sense of self, your self esteem, or lack of it, how you were raised, and how you are raising yourself. The tobacco is incredibly addictive, with all the crap they put in it, but the smoking is incredibly personal, and all about what it means to you. I can't tell you how to quit because I don't know what your smoking is about. That's something you're going to have to figure out yourself.

My smoking was about several things. It was about anger. It was about my space. I discovered I was extremely pissed off because I could never seem to find a quiet place for myself to be -- a place where I was truly me, and not someone's something. It was about carving out a tiny little fraction of space and time for myself, and when people wouldn't let me, instead of confronting them, I started to hide behind a smoke screen. That tiny little space became so very important. It was the ultimate game, my whole life, my little make believe world. I was trying so hard to be someone that I wasn’t, to please other people. Why was I doing that? Could it be that I didn't have the guts to do what I really wanted to do, that I was afraid of failing at it, and that rather than face that unpleasant thought, I just did what everybody else wanted, and then if I failed I could blame them? Well, it was an unpleasant thought, and I tried to ignore and forget it. I smoked, because when I smoked I bathed my brain in feel good endorphans and I put up an effective little smoke screen that I could hide behind.
I quit because I gave up on that. I quit because that lonely little organ that sits in my chest continues to beat faithfully, regardless of what I do to it. It beats regardless of who I am being. It beats because that is its job. It is my true friend, and I’m giving it a break. Whoever or whatever I am, how ever long it takes me to deal with this problem, I'm not going to screw my heart over. Bottom line. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

It's been a hard road, but I choose to look you in the face and be myself with you now rather than to try to be who or what you may expect me to be. I come with issues. Everybody does. It might have been someone else’s fault while I was young. But I grew up; it became my responsibility, and my fault because I didn’t take responsibility for my own actions.
With that comes a huge lesson, and that lesson is, I am no good to anybody if I am not good to myself. If I don’t eat good foods, exercise, sleep well, surround myself with good, positive people with the capacity to love, if I don’t express myself with my music and writing, cherish my boyfriend and my excellent friends and animals and my surroundings, I do a lousy job when I go to work. I’m not able to put my patients before me. I don’t do anyone any good. I come home sore, exhausted and depressed, instead of sore, exhausted and feeling like I did something. It’s a huge difference.
It is about smoking, the nicotine addiction, the habit, big tobacco and it’s not. If it isn’t tobacco, it will be something else. If you’re struggling with tobacco, be aware of the disease process and own that you’re going to pay a huge price for a little momentary pleasure. It's important to remember Big Tobacco does not give a holy rat's ass about you. They are not your friends. Be aware that it might be more about something else than simple smoking. Show some courage and just look and see. You don't have to change it if you don't want. You're the one in control. And you're not going to be anybody in the world but exactly who you are whether or not you smoke. But just once you might try to reach out and take your space. Keep going outside to take a smoke break -- just don’t smoke. For Pete’s sake, don’t tell anyone that you’ve quit. Don't tell a living soul. Make everybody think you've got to go out and smoke. Just don't smoke when you get there. Breathe instead. Breathe. Big deep breaths. If you need a screen to hide behind, go find one. But breathe. Breathe and feel the beat of your own heart.
We are all smokers, with our own weird little cigarettes. Legislation is not going to change tobacco use or any other kind of neurotic behavior. It’s like trying to legislate the sun because it causes skin cancer. If you’re truly concerned about someone else’s smoking, just be a friend. Talk about the uncomfortable things. And use that money we’d spend on legislation for our children and our teachers. They need all the help they can get.