Living in a city, a lot of people will tell you that the commute is killing them.
Unfortunately, for me, this wasn’t just a turn of phrase.
My commute was legitimately killing me, day by day and air vent by air vent. You see, for about a year I had been experiencing terrible respiratory distress. I would start out perfectly fine in the morning, but by the time I got to work everyday, it felt like I should be in the hospital with pneumonia. I was coughing out a lung, unable to catch my breath, and hacking so hard that I saw stars. I often had a grueling migraine that accompanied, and sometimes I even got feverish. Usually, after several hours of being at work, my respiratory symptoms would subside and I could get some tasks completed. By the time I got home again, however, all of my respiratory troubles were back. Well, thanks to this government-mandated quarantine, I finally know what was going wrong with my respiratory system. My car’s air conditioning system was leaking freon and making me extremely sick. Apparently, at some point down the line, the refrigerant line busted on the AC system in my car. Then, every time I ran the cooling system, the toxic fumes were circulating straight through my air vents and into my face. Since my morning and afternoon commutes involved sitting in the car for hours with the AC blasting to combat the pounding sunshine overhead, these trips always irritated my lungs the most. When I finally got a chance to sit at home in the comfort of my central HVAC system and ditch the sweaty commute, it became crystal clear that I was suffering from the car cooling system, itself. Glad we cleared up the mystery of that mild poisoning.