one HELL of a week

It's been one HELL of a week, let me tell you that right off the bat. Things seem to have leveled out, at least for the moment, but I figure it'd be a noteworthy post. This past Tuesday I felt swollen lymph nodes in my groin, and I had difficulty breathing, light-headedness, and "distortion of perception." I went to Urgent Care after work, and the doctor said I had a decent possibility of having a pretty awful case of lymphoma. Obviously I was a hot mess, and after a flurry of doctor visits, tests, and X-Rays with Joe back in Dayton, it turns out that it's most likely not cancer, and I'm on antibiotics to fight what he thinks is probably a sort of infection. There's still a possibility that it's cancer, but the possibility is remote, and even if it were, it's an essentially easy fix at this stage. Snip-snip, in-&-out. I'm banking on the statistics being on my side for once, but I think it's a comfortable bet. While things have seemed to work themselves out, nevertheless for a solid six hours of my life I was face-to-face with my own mortality, and I didn't like it one bit. I've been doing a lot of thinking in light of all this, but the validity of any of these thoughts will be shown in whether or not they stick.

The X-Rays showed that my lungs were clean of swollen lymph nodes, that all the aces were in their places so-to-speak, and so my doctor attributed my difficulty breathing to a combination of acid reflux (I'm a grandpa, apparently), an extended sort of anxiety attack, and smoking in general. He reported that my lungs showed no signs of smoking, that they were healthy as they should be for my age. I was shocked at this, but he pointed out that most smoking-related problems don't develop 20-30 years into smoking (most being the operative word here). I've only been smoking "steadily" for about 5 years. My apparent clean slate when it comes to my lungs, the new-found reality of my own mortality, and my desire to not experience "for real" what I experienced "in perception" on Wednesday, all come together into the perfect storm, and I've sworn off smoking (with the support of all the housemates), and Amos is quitting with me. 

This is Day 3. 

Officially the longest I've gone without smoking a cigarette...

... in at least 3 years.

That's both sad and impressive. 

I'm feeling good, I'm feeling energized, I'm feeling hopeful, and I'm already breathing better. Am I restless? Absolutely. Do I crave a cigarette all the time? Not "all the time" but certainly "most of the time" (it's only Day 3, after all). But I'm remaining strong, I'm trying to be resilient, because I want cigarettes to be a thing of my past. I want to try to be as healthy as I can be, for myself, for my family, for my friends, and for my (possible) future wife and kids. So... Yeah. Busy week.