48 Hours

Just hit 48 hours with No Nicotene At All. No cigarettes for a while -- heck, I couldn't breathe to begin with, much less if I tried to smoke. Bleh!

Not even the patches. None. Nada. Zip. No Nicotene. Of course, no patches is because we can't afford em.

No one is dead ... yet.

I'm still feeling the twitches and wanting a cigarette, but it's pretty much all psychological now, and not physical craving. My brain wants a cigarette. Habit wants a cigarette. Body doesn't NEED one, so this is progress.

.... still waiting for the "you'll feel SO much better once you quit" part, though. Clearly, the cigarettes had nothing to do with my being unable to regularly breathe through my nose -- ah, I love ragweed. With the pleurisy, I'm still hacking and wheezing, in fact worse than I did when I was smoking normally and not sick.

And worst of all, my nose, which is horribly over-sensitive, now REALLY works. I can smell things from blocks away. This is not good when a cat does something foul in a litter box. And food ... oh man, eating is difficult with the nose. ANY smell that isn't Totally Perfect, and I can't eat it. Seafood is now totally out, because even normal fishy smells are too strong for my nose to handle.

I'd forgotten how sensitive my nose was, and forgot that was part of WHY smoking was "good" -- the honker didn't sniff as much.

Heck, I gagged opening my ink box today. All the chemical-y smells of the ink, in an enclosed plastic box ... yep, almost hurled.

It DOES get better ... right???