Beetroot Heart

I went to the doctor a few days ago to see why the heck I'm still sick six weeks later.

They did a chest x-ray to see if I have pneumonia. I don't. It turns out that I originally had a cold, which turned into an ear/sinus infection, and which has aggravated a previously-unnoticed asthma and allergy situation. So I got steroids, an inhaler, nose spray, mucous thinner, and some sudafed. I feel so much better, although a bit like a walking pharmacy. But all this does mean that I have to end the longest relationship of my adult life--which is with cigarettes. Pisser.

I do know how bad smoking is, etc., etc. I mean, I'm a college-educated person in the twenty-first century. And things are kind of in upheaval in my personal life, so it's not an ideal time, because smoking is ironically one of the ways that I deal with stress--ironically because I know it causes more stress in the long term. I mean, what's more stressful than emphysema, really? But it's funny how knowing all of that somehow doesn't make it easier to quit. Looking back, I think I've tried to quit at least four times this year, and probably thirty times during the seventeen years I've been smoking.

The upside of the doctor's visit is that I got to see an x-ray of my chest. Lungs are so big! Mine are apparently "hyper-extended" because of the asthma, which doesn't let all the air out every time I breathe out. I wish I could put a picture of them here.

And my heart, which is, according to the doctor, "small" (and please no comments from any of my exes here. Thanks). It looks like the undeveloped beets that are attached to the beet greens when you pull them up in July. Kind of longer and thinner than I would have expected. Cool.