Normalcy?

This week has been a standard week: go to class, take notes, take notes, take notes, play clarinet, go home, eat, read/laze about/homework/play with the puppy, sleep, wake up and do it all over again. I am so glad I have my car back! I love to drive, leave when I want, go as slow as I want, go the way I want, and follow other cars as far back as I want (sometimes buses scare me...they drive so close to the other cars on the road, I think it's a miracle that they aren't in more crashes!).

I have gone running a few times this week (indoors, on a treadmill. Outside the air is so full of guck that one almost has to trudge along the sidewalk, like through mud. Yucky). It always feels nice to run, well most of the time. The beginning is nice, finishing is nice, and the way you feel after is nice. The middle is just meh. I ran track and a little cross country in high school (never competed or anything, just worked out) with one of my best friends. Ah, we had some good times. We would sing our favorite band song of the day during workouts, frolic about the empty after-school halls, and have all sorts of fun while torturing our bodies with some of those evil workouts in 90-100's degree temperatures. -shiver-

When we would run to warm-up, stretch, and run to warm-up again I liked to run around those who carried on conversations with other people. I couldn't carry on a conversation for long, but it helped me to be able to listen to someone else's' instead of concentrating on simply running. I thought that I was just less "in shape" than those others because of lacking the ability to talk and jog at the same time. I was taking a P.E. class during that spring and consequently was running/working out the hour and a half during class in the mornings, and then the hour and a half of track workouts after school throughout the semester. This might make me sound super athletic, I do not think I deserve the title. Jogging wasn't, and still isn't, the easiest thing for me; my muscles fatigue, my lungs/chest feel tight or ache, I can't breathe adequately through my nose like I have always been advised to do (in through the nose, out through the mouth), and I often get a cough that lasts from a few hours to a couple days depending on how much I run and how cold the air is that I run in. Even by the end of the semester I couldn't hold a conversation whilst jogging. I thought that those who could were just that much more in shape than I was, and I thought that all of the aforementioned effects of running were normal, that everyone felt them like I did.

I have learned that one of my siblings has a mild asthma and it occurred to me that I might have the same thing. I read about asthma, but mostly read about severe asthma. Mild asthma has become a sort of side, short-term research project, but less formal. More like "Hey! That looks interesting, let's read it."

I was talking about it with some of my family and was told I should probably go see a doctor to see if I do have a mild form of asthma, but I am reluctant. I don't want to bother with a silly little thing when I am not suffering unduly from my symptoms and they don't really get in the way of my everyday life. I don't want to take up a doctor's time with such a little thing when they could be helping someone who needs it more than I do. I don't want to be a bother. I don't want to be a whiner. I don't want to be burdensome. For now I think I will keep running and listening while others do the conversing, and my favorite band song of the day plays in the back of my mind in time with my shoes.