When I was a smoker, I often got sick. As the years went on, the problems associated with smoking started to become more prominent in my everyday life.
Before long, I was incapacitated to the point I had to take myself to the emergency room. I simply couldn’t breathe and I was scared to death.
Shortness of breath – After years of smoking, my breathing became horrible.
I didn’t want anyone to know how bad off I really was. There were times I couldn’t even sleep because I couldn’t inhale deeply enough to feel comfortable.
I had to sit up to breath better. I couldn’t lay down and breathe normally.
I used an inhaler everyday to clear up my lungs. Yet, as soon as I would feel relief, I smoked.
How awful is that?
The addiction doesn’t care. All it wants is for you to inhale more. It doesn’t care how unhealthy you are.
I said to myself over and over, “I need to quit!”
I knew it was killing me, and once I took myself to the emergency room and got better, I actually did stop for a little while.
But then I went back to it. I was so stupid, and I regret it.
Coughing – One of the most apparent symptoms is an endless cough. You can cough for hours and hours at a time and blame it on “having a cold” or “I smoke.”
But the cough you get when you have bronchitis is different. Not really sure how to describe it other than it’s deeper than a regular cough, and it happens more often.
It’s is a sign that your body is trying to expel the bad things inside. So, if you’re coughing nonstop, you better take a step back and think twice.
Your lungs are clogged up and coughing is your body’s way of trying to loosen up all that phlegm.
When I had bronchitis, I drank cough syrup.
I was coughing all the time, so I was buying the syrup almost every other day. The syrup would make the cough calm down so I could sleep better, but it all started over the next day.
I was up all night coughing. I’m sure my roommates hated me.
Wheezing – This is almost like feeling bubbles in your lungs. If you’re having serious breathing problems, you might begin to wheeze.
This is a sign telling you your lungs are clogged up with phlegm.
You can tell you’re wheezing when you exhale. Try exhaling as much as you can, and if you feel something in your lungs, and you can hear it, then there is probably something that needs to come out.
I was wheezing with every breath.
Not only was I short of breath to begin with, but when I exhaled, it was like breathing through water. That’s how much junk there was in my lungs.
It was quite scary.
Chest pain – This was a result of coughing too much. If it’s all day long non-stop, it’s going to get to a point where your chest is in pain.
You’ll try not to cough because it hurts so much, and that’s where the cough syrup comes into play.
My lungs hurt when I had to cough, so anything I could take to make myself feel better was OK in my mind. I just wanted it all to stop, and it didn’t.
That’s why I went to the emergency room.
Once I did go to the emergency room and got put on a respirator, I did end up feeling better. My cough went away, and my lungs got better, and the wheezing vanished.
But I could’ve avoided it all completely if I was not a smoker in the first place.
I probably could’ve been a lot more active in those days if I were not a smoker.
Who knows what my life could’ve been like. But I do know that smoking ruined a good chunk of it.
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