Just Try Not to Breathe, and You’ll Be Fiiiine

It’s important that I talk about the chronic respiratory & sleep disorders I’ve developed over the last few years due to too much pollen/pollution/allergens/ particulates/humidity/crap in the air, struggling to work and breathe AND care for my beloved elderly mother until she died. (No, I’m not looking for kudos; if nothing else, my situation will give you a heads up as to what may be coming your way.)

Here’s how it worked out: I would wake up around 10 a.m., utterly groggy, contact my mother to make sure she was okay, and then take military-grade prescription stimulants chased down with pot after pot of coffee until I was *sort of* functional. I would head to my minimum wage job at a local grocery store because they were *mostly* okay with a half-awake cashier. Not a very good use of my MBA.

My medical condition was a bit of a joke at work, and it would have been funny if it wasn’t so awful. There were days the sleep fog wouldn’t lift until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. There were days it wouldn’t lift at all. I would make mistakes on the job due to my grogginess, but making a mistake as a grocery store cashier didn’t mean the end of the world. My former employer was mostly gracious and understanding, and I have nothing but good things to say about them.

If I didn’t have to work on a particular day, I would do the ‘military-grade stimulants chased with coffee’ routine, and take my mother to any one of her MANY, MANY doctor appointments, or the ER if she was really unwell. It wasn’t uncommon for me to drive her while I was half-awake, biting my lip to try to help my wakefulness. Of course, since my mother was losing her vision, me driving half-awake was better than HER driving half-blind.

All the doctors I saw over the last few years incorrectly diagnosed different conditions. Sleep apnea, DSPS, circadian disorders, ‘go to bed earlier’, ‘stay away from blue lights’. One doctor even suggested I try to ‘reset’ my internal clock by staying awake an extra hour each night. BAD idea; it often leads to Non-24 Disorder.

I met with Pennsylvania Department of Occupational and Vocational Rehabilitation several times over the last few years, and they always said, ‘come up with a plan for who you want to work for’.

How could I tell them there were days that the sleep fog wouldn’t lift until the afternoon — or not at all? Who is going to hire someone like that? Even now, there are days that I drink pot after pot of coffee, trying like HELL to wake up so I can get at least a few hours out of the day.

The only thing that seems to work to help me function is sleeping IN FRONT OF an air conditioner unit, tented with sheets so the cool air blows directly ON me. After I take all my prescription allergy/sleep medications, of course. And sometimes not even that is 100% successful.

I NEVER smoked anything and NEVER had respiratory & sleep disorders; now it’s anyone’s guess as to when I’ll be functional on any given day. Winter and rainy days are much better, but I don’t have the option to work only when it’s cold. And winters are becoming warmer anyway.

Working for minimum wage with an MBA because I often CAN’T BREATHE and CAN’T FUNCTION has meant thousands of dollars in lost federal and state income and FICA taxes that I could’ve paid. It meant that I quickly slid into poverty and I’m in trouble with my student loans.

When my mother became even more frail, I would do what I had to do to take care of her, and just told myself I would deal with the consequences later. I got ‘lucky’, if you want to call it that; my mother died last year at 80. I always wonder if my anguish and stress from seeing me struggle and fall deeper into debt — and to my shame, lash out at her on occasion — accelerated her death.

On days when the sleep fog NEVER lifts, because I’ve been so congested at night, I remember thinking, “How am I supposed to work when I can’t even FUNCTION?” I sometimes take to running around the block to try to wake myself up.

The Brookings Institution has projected that climate change could reduce global GDP by over 20 percent by 2100 — a number roughly 5–10 times larger than current estimates. When you have highly educated workers who struggle to FUNCTION because they’ve ended up with chronic respiratory and sleep problems from climate change, yes, GDP will tank. At this point, I’m just happy I don’t have asthma.

What’s my next step? Working to get myself out of debt and warning people about what to expect with climate change, as far as respiratory issues are concerned. I’m also trying to figure out what I need to do so that I can breathe AND not die early. The fact remains that the health-related adverse effects of climate change are HUGE and growing. If they’re affecting me, they’re affecting millions of other humans as well.