4 weeks

It's been 4 weeks since I quit smoking!! Incidentally, also 4 weeks since my first surgery, but that's not the point of this post.

I QUIT SMOKING 4 WEEKS AGO!!! I did have one little slip up last week on Halloween..I lit a smoke and took about 4 drags off of it before deciding it was absolutely disgusting and I put it out. (In my defense, I had been drinking and was surrounded by smokers.)

I feel really good about having quit. I don't have that awful cough anymore. It's wonderful!

I also got my approval letter for my health insurance today. It's good for only 6 months, then I have to reapply, but hopefully by then I'll have gotten a new job with health insurance. I need to get my blood pressure checked out. I think I'm gonna have to get on medication. While I was in the hospital, they kept finding it to be 160/105 - or somewhere in that range of 10 points up or down. That's not good. My blood pressure has never been that high. The hospital actually put me on medication before my surgery to help bring it down so there weren't any complications.

This is just more proof that I have to change my lifestyle. Being completely sedentary is not working for me. But now that I'm totally healed from my surgery, I can get onto the elliptical. I hate that it's in the garage, but it's way too heavy to bring upstairs.

Anyway...I just wanted to celebrate being smoke free for 4 weeks. Yay!!

Smoking Pollutants

I understand that there are people in the world who are adamantly against smoking. That's your right. Smoking is a disgusting habit and there are studies that have been shown to cause cancer. I'm not debating that at all.

What I am debating is these anti-smokers who seem to think that we smokers are the only people polluting the air they breathe as they're walking down the street. Unless this smoker is blowing smoke directly into your face, don't give him nasty looks because you're also getting pollutants from the cars, trucks, and buses that are driving next to you. The pollutants are also coming from people burning logs in their fireplace or backyard. There are pollutants being put in the air by businesses and manufacturing plants.

Please understand that I fully acknowledge my own part, as a smoker, in polluting the air and, by proxy, your lungs. But please also understand that smokers aren't entirely responsible for your dirty lungs.

Please think about this before you give me a nasty look for hiding in a corner, away from other people, and doing my best not to inflict my bad habit on other unsuspecting people while smoking.