Get Off The Ground: Mask Up First For Your Families

Lap #1

Every fall and spring, my lungs would fill with cement. As a child, my allergies were severe and would then trigger severe asthma. This was before widely available breathing treatments. I don't really remember what, if anything, my mom did for me, or my doctor. I don't remember having any inhalers as a child either, but I do remember my mom telling me when I was really little she'd take me to get an adrenaline shot to help me breathe.

I just remember having to deal with it and how unbearably uncomfortable I was, how hard it was to breathe simply walking from room to room. I remember looking sick, like I had the flu, my face pasty and eyes sunken, shoulders hunched forward to help me breathe.

One of the things I dreaded during the school year was the Presidential Fitness Test, especially the mile run we had to do in order to get the official patch award showing we completed it. Push ups, sits ups and more, it was the four long unbearable laps around the track that were the worst part of it all. They felt like eternities woven into eternities when my asthma activated.

Then, when I turned 15, the asthma began to subside, year after year. Amen.

Lap #2

A few years later, I started smoking cigarettes. Clove cigarettes at first that then became Marlboro Reds. I went from being a skinny, asthmatic kid who was very athletic later in grade school, junior high and high school, playing soccer, baseball and football, to a troubled young adult with severe anxiety and a new addiction. Ugh. It sucked, and the cigarettes sucked the life out of me. Addiction is a bitch, no matter the drug of choice, and mine was nicotine and multiple other carcinogens that compromised my health from the first cigarette.

In college I remember getting colds that would turn into nasty coughs. And I'd make them worse by smoking at least a pack a day. I'd tell myself this time I'd quit, to break the monkey's back on my back, but I never did. I kept on smoking and my physical health continued to deteriorate. Little exercise, crappy food and I gained a lot of weight in my mid-20's. Emotionally unhappy as well, the cigarettes were the only things that made me feel better. My ex-wife's family also smoked cigarettes -- her dad, mom and sister (although my ex did not smoke) -- and so we all smoked it up every time we visited.

Years later, I'd move to Santa Cruz and start a new life, meeting Amy, who also smoked. Not as much as my pack-plus a day habit, but a few cigarettes here and there. She would quit soon after we were dating, eventually motivating me if I wanted to marry her.

"I don't want to be married to a smoker," she said. "I want us to be healthy for the rest of our lives."

And so after many failed attempts, on September 22, 2002, I officially quit.

Lap #3

My birth father, Jerry, smoked cigarettes when my sister and I were born and throughout our childhood. That made my allergies and asthma even worse, which I didn't think was possible when I was at my most miserable.

My sister and I stopped seeing Jerry when I was 13. It would be decades later when I read his obituary online. My mom still heard from his sister once and awhile, and I believe that's how she heard he had died. His obit was less than 30 words in total. It said he died on January 2, 2012, in a hospital in Redding, CA, and that he had lung cancer. He was only 69 years old.

Lung cancer jumped out at me like an abusive PE coach trailing close behind me on the track. Every so often I look behind me figuratively and I take a deep breath.

Lap #4

Eight years after his stroke, my dad developed an abscess on his lung. He nearly died in our hometown hospital, developing secondary infections, and had to be moved to the UCLA Medical Center in Southern California. The doctors there helped him recover and heal after removing the abscess and part of his lung.

When he and our mom was married in 1979, he also was a smoker. Mom never was, thankfully, but Dad smoked for decades. He was a police officer and detective for 32 years, smoked over two packs a day, and then in 1984 he quit cold turkey. Ironically that's about the time I started smoking. 10 years later he'd have that stroke, right after he retired from the police department.

Dad died in 2012 from advanced melanoma, the same year my birth father died, although due to different circumstances. Thankfully both he and Mom got to hold our girls when they were very little. I miss them both terribly.

The Longest Mile

Seasonal allergies and adult asthma came back to haunt me about 14 years ago. The asthma activates when I have a surge of allergies or catch a cold, usually in the fall and then again in the spring. I also worry about the years I smoked cigarettes and the damage done to my lungs. I'm healthy overall and exercise regularly, but I still think about that metaphorical PE coach along the way.

And today, we're still neck deep in a pandemic, the virus known as COVID-19, which affects the lungs among other organs and destructive symptoms. The last time I flew in a plane was in March when I went to one of my last in-person conferences this year, where (again ironically) I had an allergy/cold combo going that had activated my asthma. Where everyone around me got a little freaky wondering if I had the coronavirus.

Nearly 220,000 people have died in the U.S. alone from covid. There have been nearly 40 million cases worldwide. Cases are surging again as well, just in time for flu season, with covid still being 10 times as lethal as the seasonal flu. Our family got our flu shots, which we've done every year since having children. I'm 55 now and although not everyone shows symptoms with covid, I'm in a more susceptible group due to my history. My dad had health issues and nearly died in the hospital, my mom had health issues and did die in the hospital, and my sister had a random infection a few years ago and nearly died in the hospital. I had another type of abscess infection three years ago, unrelated to the lungs, and I do not want to be in the hospital ever again.

Although I haven't flown on a plane for eight months, I remember all too well the pre-flight reminder of what to do if the plane lost cabin pressure and the oxygen masks dropped down. You put your mask on first, and then you help your loved ones and your children.

The infectious disease experts tell us the only thing we can do today about COVID-19, until a viable vaccine is available, is to wear our masks, stay socially distanced, do not gather in large groups and wash our hands, a lot. I believe the science of this; it's not about personal freedoms to get sick or make others sick. The pandemic sucks for sure on so many levels, and like many others, we don't have the resources to go on and on if one of us got sick. That's why nothing else matters to me except to keep myself healthy -- for me -- and for my wife and daughters. For my family and friends as well.

This has been the longest mile for many of us and it's far from over. My lungs are currently clear as is my mandate: mask up first for your families.

Be safe and well.