This post is unedited

I went into work on Wednesday not particularly looking forward to it, but not exactly dreading it, either. Just a regular day. I had a short shift (4 to 9 p.m.) and it didn't look like it'd be particularly difficult; it's the middle of the month, after all, and we have no particularly intense sales occurring.

I'd been there about an hour and was ringing up a guy who was buying watch batteries when my chest started to hurt. At first, it was no big deal--occasional chest pains aren't unusual for me.....

Jesus, fuck...what the hell am I doing, sitting here trying to write a clever, low-key factual account of what happened to me? I am constantly doing this...taking what is, at best, a mediocre existence & trying to turn it into a clever life. Trying to put a positive, yet not too hopeful spin to events that aren't really very important and trying to downplay things that really are.

I was never in danger of dying, but on Wednesday night my lung underwent a partial collapse of about 10%. The air which normally should've been in my lung leaked out of it into the pleural cavity which surrounds the lung through a rupture...almost certainly caused by my smoking. It's called "pneumothorax"; specifically "spontaneous pneumothorax" (i.e. stemming from no specific cause). The air which should be in the lung that gets trapped in the surrounding pleural cavity puts pressure on the lung, which results in intense pain, shortness of breath, sweating, bluish-tinge...basically, all the symptoms of a classic heart attack. I thought I was going to die. For real and for true, man, I thought that was it. I was going to die after being hauled out of my shitty place of work on a gurney and stuffed into an ambulance by a bunch of hulking morons who gave the vaguest impression that they thought I was overreacting to the crushing pain and inability to breathe which I was experiencing.

Don't get me wrong, they did their job and got me to the hospital, but if I never, especially while struggling desperately to breathe, hear the phrase "On a scale of 1 to 10" again, I'll be a happy fucking dude. "On a scale of 1 to 10," this crewcut imbecile says, refusing to look me in the eye as if chestpains and shortness of breath were symptoms of a psychic fucking disease that may be transmitted via eye contact, "with 10 being the worst pain you've ever felt"--no shit, folks, he felt the need to CLARIFY the 1 through 10 scale he was giving me while I wheezed and clawed at my oxygen mask--"how would you rank this pain?"

A quiz. A FUCKING quiz! I expected him to hand me a #2 pencil and a bubble form while I sorted through the pains of a perforating appendix, the once freshly stitched hernia operation I hadn't had any pain medication for, the raw and throbbing sockets of my wisdom teeth and the countless small sprains, cuts, contusions and cases of road rash I'd developed as a kid, not to mention the sting of the hydrogen peroxide invariably dumped from its industrial size bottle on to said wounds.

"Unnngggghhhhh," I groaned, banging my head back against the padding on the gurney and wishing I could change psychic places with this lackwit for just one second or, barring that, to have the strength to kick him a solid one in the balls and then quiz him about the particular subtleties and undertones of the resulting pain ("Would you say the edges are ragged or sharp? a piquant stab? or a dull throb?"). Remembering the overbearing agony of my appendix perforating and realizing that I'd put that up against any labor pains anywhere at any time, I grunted "Nine? Eight? I don't fucking knooowwwwww...."

Anyway, I ended up in the hospital for just over 24 hours, after a ride in an ambulance. Ready for the punchline? I don't have any insurance at all! None! Yay me!

Why don't I have any insurance? Because the amount of money I would spend each paycheck on insurance is, frequently, the difference between making my rent and not making my rent, between being able to buy groceries or not being able to buy groceries, between being able to put gas into the car which is necessary to get me to work so that I can make my car payments on the car which I have so that I can go to work so I can afford the gas necessary to run the car I need to get to the job that will allow me to make my car payments for the car that is necessary to get me to the job that pays for the gas I need to be able to drive to the job thaaaahhhrhhrhhrrrgghhhHHHHH!!!!!!!

You'll have to excuse me for that vicious regress...I'm going through serious, second day nicotine withdrawal right now, and it's very hard for me to see the positive in anything at all, at all.

Why should I go back to this job? I was ashamed to be pulled out of this job when I thought I was dying. That's the thing that I keep thinking back to in order to keep from running out and buying a pack of cigarettes: that being rolled out of the retail establishment where I work, wearing the stupid outfit I'm required to wear, was the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me. That and the thought that, while I'm still not afraid to die, I'd really rather it not be by suffocation: being in pain and not being able to breathe is just an open ticket to panic, and I never want to die in a panic.

But, back to the job part of the not-smoking thing: do you see it? I WOULDN'T BE CAUGHT DEAD DOING THIS JOB! Literally! If I were to die doing this job and my obituary read "He was a sales associate for such-and-such a crappy, manufacturing-outsourcing, retail establishment" my very last feelings would be of intense shame.

So...what do I do? Burn all bridges and throw myself into the wind, trusting on my heartiness to allow me to take root? Or plan something that might or might not work? Or get over myself and my shame and realize that it never mattered in the first place? that this is everybody's dilemma and quit feeling special?

I honestly don't know....