Dreams and Things

Today I had two cigarettes with my morning coffee and decided to put on a stage one nicotine patch shortly afterwards. I am going to see how long I can go without smoking a cigarette. Lately it has seemed to me that I am smoking solely for the purpose of delivering nicotine to my system, Nearly all my habits have been broken. * * * * * * * * * * I am writing this several weeks later. I have been using the nicotine patches regularly every day. I put a new one on as soon as I wake up. The patches really help with the addiction itself. Other bad habits still need to be broken, however. I am using tranquilizers to take the edge off of quitting. This has proven to be effective. I am also identifying smoking triggers and slowly eliminating them. For example, having a cigarette with my morning coffee or immediately after a meal. I also try to keep myself busy and, when possible sleep or rest a while each day. It's been torture nevertheless. I try to pace myself so that I only have o...

I decided to quit smoking about a week or so ago. It has not been easy. I started at over a pack a day. I am now down to just around 10 a day, give or take one or four cigarettes. This process is making me irritable. I wonder to what extent it made me lash out at my wife during her illness (see my previous post). I don't know why I decided to quit. The reasoning and motivation behind it elude me now. I know that my psychoanalyst has been "on my case" about quitting for months. I have always resisted, saying that "Now is not the time. I need to be psychologically ready." I guess I must have become ready although I don't remember when. True to my anal—retentive nature I have made databases in OpenOffice and Google Documents to keep track of my smoking progress. At this point I only keep track of the number of cigarettes I smoke a day. I keep a mental shorthand of the triggers I am encountering. I have handled and eliminated these for the most part. At ...

My wife has pneumonia and has decided to stay at her mother's apartment until she is well. I don't know how long that will be but I expect it to last at least a week or maybe more. We had a fight before she left. She is mean to me when she is sick and this is difficult to bear. I cannot understand why she is so hateful and prone to playing head games. It boils down to my inadequacies to provide her the same level of care she provides to me when I am sick. That may be the case but I am doing the best I can. Also, I don't treat her like shit when she takes care of me. I feel terrible. I hate it that she feels the need to leave me when she is sick. I hate it that she thinks I am inadequate. I also hate the way she treats me. All this hate when she is indeed not well. I find it difficult to bear and snap back at her. My ego is bruised. The other night I yelled at her at the top of my lungs and told her to leave. She eventually came home that night. But the little digs began...

I developed a rash on my shins during the last weeks of my  Hepatitis treatment. At first my family doctor diagnosed it as "Paticia", some sort of broken blood vessels below the surface of the skin. But on a later visit he noticed what I had seen as a degeneration of it into a burning rash. The rash is intense. It stands up from the surface of the skin and is hot to the touch. It itches and burns. It is scaly and has the appearance of a large wound that is scabbed and peeling. I also have small rashes which are characterized by small bubbles that bubble up from the skin. These seem to be spreading. Right now they are localized to my left foreleg and around my torso. I am afraid they will spread to other parts of my body, especially my eyes. These itch like hell. My doctor referred me to a dermatologist. I saw him yesterday. He was a very elderly man and dismissed my condition. I had thought they were shingles based on what I had read on the web. I wasn't completely sa...