"I would like to write, next time, about the difference I found, in 2007, between American cigarettes and French/European cigarettes." (Closing words of my post: "Becoming Aware" - January 29, 2013)
I'd been careful to explain, earlier in that post, "Becoming Aware," that "I was young; I didn't smoke" -- speaking of my life up to that point (late teens/early 20s). I then went on to speak of my next ten years, during which I repeatedly became very sick from exposure to cigarette smoke. I believed it went without saying that no one who was that sickened by other people's smoke would ever want to smoke. In my mind, this was just a "given." That "given" stretched to include my next decade, as well.
However, looking at my closing sentence of that post, last night, it suddenly dawned on me that, without further qualification as to what I meant, it could have sounded as though I'd taken up smoking in France.
Nothing could be further from the truth. But I had an exceptionally pleasant surprise there.
It was an initially discouraging story with a very good ending. We'd tried to rent a house in France which we were told contained no scented items -- a very difficult thing to ascertain over the phone. Upon arriving at the given address, we found the house filled with scented candles. Every room had a scent to it. There was a brand-name aerosol deodorizer in the laundry room. Layers and layers of scent were built into the inside of that house. There was also plush carpeting -- this was not looking good. I went outside and just waited to be driven away from there.
We ending up driving almost all night searching for a suitable hotel. Finally, we came upon the only likely candidate. There was one drawback, however: It was a hotel which contained both smoking and non-smoking rooms. The dining and social areas were partially smoked in; the hallways carried the odor of smoke.
We were told, however, that the room we were to occupy had always been smoke-free. Still, this whole arrangement was scary to me. I hadn't been in a smoked-in residence or restaurant in years. We kept a window open, always, during our stay there. Every time I left the room, I sped through the hallway holding my breath. If the dining area smelled of active smoke at various times, I stopped eating, left the table, and went outside. The usual routines for an MCS person.
On the streets of Paris, I encountered one whiff of smoke on top of another. It was an almost constant stream of smoke -- even elderly ladies smoked. Everybody smoked.
You put all that together and --
I didn't get a single migraine for the whole time I was there. The only migraine I had was on the first day, after having been on a plane whose engine had poured jet-fuel fumes into our back-end seats for two hours on the runway -- and which also had a sound-buffer malfunction so that the engine noise became intolerable. That was an understandable migraine.
I expected to get more migraines, with my being in a smokers' hotel and being surrounded by smokers everywhere on the city streets. But "more migraines" never came.
Although I'd inhaled more than my usual share of cigarette emissions outdoors and cigarette odors indoors, something was profoundly different.
I had no cataclysmic neurological storm of head and face pain, no blurry/shaky vision, no balance difficulties or sensations of trembling. All that I experienced, in reaction to all of those cigarettes and cigarette odors, was a stuffed nose. It didn't affect my nervous system at all.
I tentatively concluded that the French cigarettes must have had significantly less harmful additives than our American cigarettes. I never really looked up the topic, however, until last night. Having glanced through a few items on the issue, I think I'm correct in my conclusion.
And, to recap -- I've never smoked a cigarette in my life. The thought of a cloud of smoke hitting my lungs in a big "puff" has always been frightening to me. I've always expected not to be able to breathe, and to be terrified. Then, once the smoke went in, I'd want to get it out -- not just the exhaled part, but all of it . . . every single fragment of particulate. But you can't scrub a lung.
Cheers and good air to you --
~ Daisies
I'd been careful to explain, earlier in that post, "Becoming Aware," that "I was young; I didn't smoke" -- speaking of my life up to that point (late teens/early 20s). I then went on to speak of my next ten years, during which I repeatedly became very sick from exposure to cigarette smoke. I believed it went without saying that no one who was that sickened by other people's smoke would ever want to smoke. In my mind, this was just a "given." That "given" stretched to include my next decade, as well.
However, looking at my closing sentence of that post, last night, it suddenly dawned on me that, without further qualification as to what I meant, it could have sounded as though I'd taken up smoking in France.
Nothing could be further from the truth. But I had an exceptionally pleasant surprise there.
It was an initially discouraging story with a very good ending. We'd tried to rent a house in France which we were told contained no scented items -- a very difficult thing to ascertain over the phone. Upon arriving at the given address, we found the house filled with scented candles. Every room had a scent to it. There was a brand-name aerosol deodorizer in the laundry room. Layers and layers of scent were built into the inside of that house. There was also plush carpeting -- this was not looking good. I went outside and just waited to be driven away from there.
We ending up driving almost all night searching for a suitable hotel. Finally, we came upon the only likely candidate. There was one drawback, however: It was a hotel which contained both smoking and non-smoking rooms. The dining and social areas were partially smoked in; the hallways carried the odor of smoke.
We were told, however, that the room we were to occupy had always been smoke-free. Still, this whole arrangement was scary to me. I hadn't been in a smoked-in residence or restaurant in years. We kept a window open, always, during our stay there. Every time I left the room, I sped through the hallway holding my breath. If the dining area smelled of active smoke at various times, I stopped eating, left the table, and went outside. The usual routines for an MCS person.
On the streets of Paris, I encountered one whiff of smoke on top of another. It was an almost constant stream of smoke -- even elderly ladies smoked. Everybody smoked.
You put all that together and --
I didn't get a single migraine for the whole time I was there. The only migraine I had was on the first day, after having been on a plane whose engine had poured jet-fuel fumes into our back-end seats for two hours on the runway -- and which also had a sound-buffer malfunction so that the engine noise became intolerable. That was an understandable migraine.
I expected to get more migraines, with my being in a smokers' hotel and being surrounded by smokers everywhere on the city streets. But "more migraines" never came.
Although I'd inhaled more than my usual share of cigarette emissions outdoors and cigarette odors indoors, something was profoundly different.
I had no cataclysmic neurological storm of head and face pain, no blurry/shaky vision, no balance difficulties or sensations of trembling. All that I experienced, in reaction to all of those cigarettes and cigarette odors, was a stuffed nose. It didn't affect my nervous system at all.
I tentatively concluded that the French cigarettes must have had significantly less harmful additives than our American cigarettes. I never really looked up the topic, however, until last night. Having glanced through a few items on the issue, I think I'm correct in my conclusion.
And, to recap -- I've never smoked a cigarette in my life. The thought of a cloud of smoke hitting my lungs in a big "puff" has always been frightening to me. I've always expected not to be able to breathe, and to be terrified. Then, once the smoke went in, I'd want to get it out -- not just the exhaled part, but all of it . . . every single fragment of particulate. But you can't scrub a lung.
Cheers and good air to you --
~ Daisies
