Something In The Air

Okay, this snapshot of LA smog is reminiscent of the jokes Johnny Carson used to make.   I've been here twenty two years and it has never been like this.   

That doesn't mean that the air is getting polluted nonetheless.  Follow me.

When I lived in NY the first part of my life, the wild weather extremes used to prompt at least six or seven sinus infections a year.   Besides the climate, office building never clean their heating and cooling vents.   Thus, I was under the weather largely for about a third of any given year.

I move to LA and things improve greatly.   I am proactive and do a nasal rinse every single morning.   As a result, my sinus ailments usually just show up perhaps once or twice a year.   And I can handle them better now with a top notch internist who actually returns my calls when I come down with one of these infections.   The treatment is usually the same.  Pop some Claritin-D like it's coming out of a Pez dispenser.  Regular Flonase squirts.  And probably an antibiotic.  

Mid-August, I headed into Sinusland with a real doozy this time.   One day, I was so screwed up that I laid down for a nap at 630PM and woke up at 3AM.  Woot woot.

I call my internist per usual and get the usual advice and prescriptions.   They do the trick but I am still not right.   I have a cough and a wheeze that makes me wonder just when I smoked those two packs of cigarettes yesterday.   Hmmmm, says the doctor.  He puts in on a steroid inhaler, which works a bit.

But I am now in my third week of hacking and I actually will make a face call at my doctor's tomorrow.   He tells me beforehand that he has been inundated with respiratory ailments for usually healthy people.

Something is in the air, he says.

I think about this and realize it's the purple elephant in the room.

You see, California and, in this case, Los Angeles are inundated with homeless folks.   Tent cities are popping up on virtually every block.   Nightly newscasts tell us that tuberculosis is around.  So is typhus.  There is human excrement all over the place.

All of this stuff has nowhere to go but up.   Into the atmosphere and the air we breathe.   

I'm going to broach this hypothesis with my doctor.   I know, however, that I am right.  

So LA smog?  Feh.   It's got nothing on what is really in that breathable air.  And this prompts the impetus for this month's Morons of the Month.   Come back Thursday to see how it all ties together.

Hack, hack, wheeze.

Dinner last night:  Super Dodger Dog at the game.