Well, I had good intentions...

I really did intend to follow my life change of blogging every day.  What I didn't count on was coming down with the worse cold/sinus infection I've had in a very long time.  Today is the first day I've felt like doing more that moving from the bed to the couch. 

My guess is that this stuffy head and all over achy feeling started as allergies December 26 when we had Christmas with my in-laws.  My sister-in-law still smokes after seeing her husband pass away from lung cancer.  My mother-in-law lost half a lung to cancer.  They don't believe that smoking causes cancer or that people are actually allergic to cigarette smoke or can get things like emphysema from second hand smoke. Since I'm both allergic and have fibromyalgia which causes a weak immune system, I always get sick when I'm around smokers.

My mom who never smoked a day in her life developed emphysema from sitting in a 30' x 30' office with 5 smokers.  My son who is asthmatic, could not go to his other grandmother's apartment where she and his two uncles would sit around almost chain smoking.  We kept an air cleaner going there and even with it, I've seen fresher air in bars.  Seriously.  There were windows that went all the way across the living room so there was great natural lighting.  When you walked in the door, you could literally see a fog of blueish gray smoke in the air even when no one was smoking.  Visiting her almost always necessitated a visit to the doctor with in a few days.  When he ended up in the hospital because of visiting her, that's when we started picking her up and going somewhere to visit.  If we brought her to our house, she'd spend all of the visit on the back porch smoking so that's where we'd visit with her in warm weather.  

So now if I seem a little irritated with people who believe that their cigarette smoke doesn't hurt anyone, you  why.   I respect their rights to smoke but smokers should show common courtesy and not smoke around those of us who have said many times that we were allergic and it made us sick everything.  I hope that I am getting better.  I've got to make a doctor's appointment to go in and talk about my lab results so I'm going to go ahead and schedule it.  That way I can get this checked out as well.

Yesterday I was talking to my best friend about how down I was on myself for not living up to my life changes more than one day.  She reminded me of one sentence in Monday's blog post - Most of all I will refuse to feel guilty for being ill.  I will not accept anything less than living life to the fullest!  She pointed out that I didn't specify that it was fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome or chronic myofascial pain.  She had me on that one!  

Thanks for listening to my rant today.  If any of you are smokers, my intent was not to judge or be critical  you.  If I offended you, please accept my apologies.