Catching My Breath

When I really think about it now, I don't know when the last time I woke up without having my nose not being clogged up was. It's been that long. With this past week, I really got to appreciate what it means to be able to breathe properly.

I can normally be around animals if I'm visiting someones house. I know I have some allergies to their fur, but it usually isn't so bad - until I started living with them that is. Being on an acreage this week, the family had cats and dogs in their house. I felt it right away. When I woke up on Monday for camps, I hadn't felt so bad in years.

I don't think it's a good thing, but most days when I wake up, my nose is plugged to some degree. Sometimes, it's really minor and I can ignore it until it clears up throughout the day. Other times, I will have to blow my nose a couple times and it will be good for the rest of the day. Throughout this entire week, I don't think I have ever had so much trouble clearing my windpipe and pathways that air needs to go through.

It got to a climax on Thursday night/Friday morning. I woke up at around 1:00am and I had so much trouble breathing. I couldn't breathe through my left nostril and my eye also seemed to be glued shut. It took me probably 45 minutes to be able to have things even out again and be able to go back to bed. It was a painful 45 minutes.

Anyways, camp this week was okay. I'd like to think that it went better than I am picturing it to be because of my allergies. However, it did feel different from the two previous camps though. I didn't feel like I was as focused and engaged, for whatever reason, in connecting with the campers and volunteer coaches as much. As the week wore on, I definitely did get to connect better with the guy coaches, but that seemed to be about it. There are a few kids that definitely stood out to me and I was able to have a lot of fun with them, so I think that that was still pretty good.

Maybe part of it is that I'm coming from such familiarity in week 2 with the NEAC/Steele Heights camp that my outlook was a bit blurred. And in my first week in Cochrane, the kids there were really special.

Either way, my thoughts are quite scrambled right now because my mind has been all over the place in the last day or two. But that's okay because I'm home for another couple of days before I head west to West Meadows Baptist to do camps there.

Them mosquitoes better stay the heck away from us. Unlikely, though. Dangggg!