I have an ecig. I love my ecig. My ecig goes everywhere that I go.
What is an ecig? Electronic cigarette. It is a way to get my nicotine fix and not kill myself while I'm doing it. I have the DSE 901 which is a rechargeble battery, an atomizer that heats up and a cartridge with a polyfiber filler to hold the e juice. When I vape and exhale I am blowing out a cloud of vapor, not smoke. It is pretty much odorless and dissipates quickly. It doesn't have any of the carcinogens that are in a regular cigarette. You can get the juice in just about any flavor you want and if you can't find what you want you can make your own. I have been vaping since mid April.
When I went to see my regular doctor for my monthly appt to get all my meds in April, my blood pressure was 230/110 and my heart rate was in the 130's. These are not good levels at all. My doctor tried to admit me but since I didn't have insurance the hospital called it an "elective admission" and wouldn't admit me. So much for caring about the community like they advertise.
At that point I was a 2+ pack a day smoker. I've been smoking since I was 12, only quitting while I was pregnant. My best friend, Steph, tried to talk me into the ecig for a week or more before I decided to give it a try. I read a lot about it and talked to my doctor before I decided to give it a go. I ordered one ecig from a place in China. The old saying "slow boat to/from China" is not just a saying. It really is slow,lol I actually got tired of waiting and ordered another from someone else and had it here in 3 days. Just a few vapes and I was hooked. These things are amazing! My husband and older son are both using them now too. We are all three down to smoking about a pack a week and it won't be long until we are totally off of cigarettes.
I buy the unflavored juice, vegetable glycerin and different flavorings and make our own flavored juices. I keep up with the maintenance on them for all of us. It is a little costly to get started. You need to order some spare parts because they do go bad and you don't want to be stuck waiting for them in the mail. I keep 3 of us vaping for around $80 a month now. Before I started vaping I was spending $40 every 5 days for a carton of cigs just for me, that's not including what Terry and Jesse were smoking. We are now in the black by about $150 dollars and are saving money every month now. I have this great big huge tackle box that I keep all our supplies in,lol
There is a warning to this. nicotine is a poison. You need to be careful with it. When you are mixing, don't lick your fingers to get the juice off them. Keep it put up away from children and pets. When you are done, wash your hands. I actually keep a can of the baby wipes next to me and use those to wipe my hands off.
I'm going to give you some links that I use all the time and give you a little info about it.
http://www.ruyandirect.com/index.php?gOo=shop.dwt
This is where I buy most of my stuff from. Wayne is great guy and the customer service can't be beat. I buy full kits from them as well as my juice, spare parts, passthrus, all sorts of things from him. I got into a bad batch of batteries, either that or I was just being a noob and messing them up because I didn't know what I was doing. He replaced every one of them for me. He even replaced an atomizer that I didn't buy from him. I thought I was keeping diiferent things from different suppliers seperate but I messed up on that one. You know you are getting great customer service when they replace something that you haven't even bought from them! As for shipping, it is worth it to pay the extra and have it shipped EMS. You will get it much faster than if you pay for the regualr shipping. As long as your orders aren't to big you don't have to worry about customs. I've had some go through customs and some that didn't but I've never not gotten my order.
http://www.vaporstix.com/
This is another great place to buy from. They are located in the U.S. and the shipping time is great!
http://www.juicyliquid.com/store2/
This newly married couple are awesome! They have bottles, juices, syringes, pretty much anything you might need. Good prices and super fast shipping. They are really nice people too.
https://www.lorannoils.com/
I order the 1 dram size of flavorings from here. Once I figure out what flavors we like then I order 1 oz bottles from
http://www.bickfordflavors.com/item.asp?id=141&range=3
Because the 1 oz bottles are about half the price as they are at LorAnn's. Warning, when you mix, do it one or two drops at a time, especially with the cherry. Some flavors are very, very strong.
The next couple of links are great places to find information on just about anything pertaining to an ecig
http://www.righttovape.com/index.php
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/
If this helps even one person get off of cigarettes then I"ll have done something good!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
God and I
March 4, 2004 I get a call just as I get to work. My mother’s house is on fire and they cannot find my mom or my oldest son. My three kids were staying with her until the end of the school year since I had moved one county over and they didn’t want to change schools in the middle of the year. I race there just in time to see the smoke still rolling from a totally burned down 2 story house. Still no sign of my mother or my son. I knew where my other 2 children were, they were in tears on my lap. About 30 minutes after I got there my son pulled up in my mother’s car, alone. That is when we all figured out that my mother was gone. Because of the heat they couldn’t search for her body until the next day. I was back at her house before they were the next day. I wanted to be there if they found her. When they carried what was left of her out of the ashes in a Walmart bag, I passed out. This begins my anger of God.
May 1, 2004 I married my dream man. My mother wasn’t there to see me finally get it right. We used her Bible, that she had previously given me, for our ceremony. It was a bittersweet day. As we left for our honeymoon we stopped at the cematery, and left 2 yellow roses, one for her and one for my stepfather. I was still mad at God.
May 17, 2004, we are told that my husband of just three weeks has just one year to live. Getting this information just after losing my mother was almost more than I could bear but I made it through it and I was even madder at God than I was before.
June 2004, my husband Terry is put in the hospital with a really bad case of pneumonia. We almost lost him on that one.
July1,2004 Terry got laid off from his job. Not the worst news we could get but it really did nothing to reinforce my faith.
Let’s fast forward to August 27, 2004. We are on our Harley on our way to Florida for a little weekend vacation. We are about 200 miles from our home. It took us almost 7 hours to go 200 miles. That is unheard of for us. We are/were the type to get on the bike and go, not stopping until we need gas or some water to drink. But for some reason we just kept stopping. We even talked about going home and getting our van since we weren’t that far from home and it wouldn’t set us back much time wise. Sadly, we didn’t do that. At 6:59am that sunny morning we stopped for breakfast at Waffle House, a favorite place of bikers and rednecks, of which I am proud to say I am both,lol The restaurant was very close to the red light on the opposite side of the road so to be safe Terry pulled up a ways and got in the turning lane. It was a good move in theory. We would pull into the fire station parking lot and then pull back out when the coast was clear. I stood on the pegs to get a good look, it was clear and I told him to go. We almost made it across when an SUV doing 45 miles over the posted speed limit slammed into us. I took most of the hit. I flew through the air landing 88 feet from the point of impact and rolled three times. I could hear everyone in the fire department come out running and yelling but I couldn’t get a sound out of my bruised lungs. I could hear my husband asking about me and them telling him that he was alone. He was yelling at them to find me. I see a really large man stand over me and say “Oh God here she is” and that is all I remember for a week. I had 119 fractures from my right hip to my right ankle, a ruptured bladder, lacerated liver bruised lungs, etc. To give you an idea of how bad it was, people with a hip fracture that isn’t as bad as mine was, 40% of them die before they ever reach the hospital from internal bleeding. It was about as bad as it could get for anyone.
I am not going to bore you with all the details of what went on the next few weeks but instead give you my theory on what happened and why. I was so mad at God that I had taken my cross necklace off weeks earlier. Put anything that had to do with Christianity away where I couldn’t see it. I was so pissed at God! I was mad, but I never once denounced him. I honestly think that the Devil knew I was close to doing just that. I think he figured that if just one more bad thing happened to me that I would forever denounce The Lord. What happened had just the opposite effect. Instead of blaming God for the wreck I praised him for keeping me alive. I praised him for letting it happen at 7am when there was a shift change and we would have twice as many people to take care of us. I praised him for letting it happen in the parking lot of a fire dept. I praised him for that great big fireman that finally found me. I praised him for letting it happen in Birmingham, Al where they have one of the highest rated trauma teams in the nation. I praised him for giving me an orthopedist that is rated 5th in the nation. I praised him for letting me live after getting hit by an SUV.
Let’s fast forward a couple of years, May 2006, I had had 10 surgeries at this point and was unable to walk without crutches at all. My middle son is getting ready to graduate. I had felt something shift in my hip and had went to see my doc. We drove 180 miles each way to see this doctor at least once a month, sometimes more. My pelvis had shifted and a piece of bone was laying across my femoral artery and another piece of bone was pushing into my bladder. One wrong move and I would bleed to death before anyone even knew anything was wrong. I had a CT scan to verify where everything was in preparation for my surgery. In all the other surgeries my doctor had never once said, “Get your affairs in order” but he did this time. I refused to have the surgery until after my son graduated so it was scheduled for June 16, 2006. I was on total bed rest, not allowed to do anything at all. If I fell I was to go straight to the closest ER. I was not allowed to be alone for even the smallest amount of time.. In May, Cody, my middle son, had gotten saved. He was really proud of it and I didn’t discourage it. We started going to church. I decided it was time for me to be saved and to get baptized. On June 4, 2006 I was at the church. The Baptismal was behind the pulpit. You had to go up 10 steps to get to it, then down 4 steps to get into it, get baptized, then walk across to the other side, go up 5 stairs, then down 10 more. Being on crutches I was terrified of the steps. I used my crutches to get up the first 10 steps and down into the baptismal. Terry was supposed to go around and meet me on the other side with my crutches but he wasn’t there. I didn’t want to just stand there cold and wet with everyone looking at me so I walked across the baptismal, up the 5 stairs and down the other 10 stairs without the aid of crutches! I had not been able to do that before then or since then ever again. The following Wednesday we went to the prayer meeting. I had never been to one and really didn’t know what to expect. The pastor had all the women come down and put their hands on me and each one said a prayer for me. You could feel the power in the air!
My surgery was supposed to take 8-10 hours, use 4-6 units of blood, and me be in the ICU for a few days. It actually took less than 4 hours, used no blood and I was home in 3 days. My doctor told me that if he hadn't known better that my CT scan was from someone else, that once he got in there he didn't see near the scar tissue that the scan had shown was there.
I still can’t walk but I feel God and Christ in my life every day. Like I said, I am living, breathing proof of miracles.
Edit on 11/23/10:
God has decided that I am not worthy of even one day without pain. In fact, things are getting worse every day. I've decided that God hates me and frankly, at this point I don't care.
May 1, 2004 I married my dream man. My mother wasn’t there to see me finally get it right. We used her Bible, that she had previously given me, for our ceremony. It was a bittersweet day. As we left for our honeymoon we stopped at the cematery, and left 2 yellow roses, one for her and one for my stepfather. I was still mad at God.
May 17, 2004, we are told that my husband of just three weeks has just one year to live. Getting this information just after losing my mother was almost more than I could bear but I made it through it and I was even madder at God than I was before.
June 2004, my husband Terry is put in the hospital with a really bad case of pneumonia. We almost lost him on that one.
July1,2004 Terry got laid off from his job. Not the worst news we could get but it really did nothing to reinforce my faith.
Let’s fast forward to August 27, 2004. We are on our Harley on our way to Florida for a little weekend vacation. We are about 200 miles from our home. It took us almost 7 hours to go 200 miles. That is unheard of for us. We are/were the type to get on the bike and go, not stopping until we need gas or some water to drink. But for some reason we just kept stopping. We even talked about going home and getting our van since we weren’t that far from home and it wouldn’t set us back much time wise. Sadly, we didn’t do that. At 6:59am that sunny morning we stopped for breakfast at Waffle House, a favorite place of bikers and rednecks, of which I am proud to say I am both,lol The restaurant was very close to the red light on the opposite side of the road so to be safe Terry pulled up a ways and got in the turning lane. It was a good move in theory. We would pull into the fire station parking lot and then pull back out when the coast was clear. I stood on the pegs to get a good look, it was clear and I told him to go. We almost made it across when an SUV doing 45 miles over the posted speed limit slammed into us. I took most of the hit. I flew through the air landing 88 feet from the point of impact and rolled three times. I could hear everyone in the fire department come out running and yelling but I couldn’t get a sound out of my bruised lungs. I could hear my husband asking about me and them telling him that he was alone. He was yelling at them to find me. I see a really large man stand over me and say “Oh God here she is” and that is all I remember for a week. I had 119 fractures from my right hip to my right ankle, a ruptured bladder, lacerated liver bruised lungs, etc. To give you an idea of how bad it was, people with a hip fracture that isn’t as bad as mine was, 40% of them die before they ever reach the hospital from internal bleeding. It was about as bad as it could get for anyone.
I am not going to bore you with all the details of what went on the next few weeks but instead give you my theory on what happened and why. I was so mad at God that I had taken my cross necklace off weeks earlier. Put anything that had to do with Christianity away where I couldn’t see it. I was so pissed at God! I was mad, but I never once denounced him. I honestly think that the Devil knew I was close to doing just that. I think he figured that if just one more bad thing happened to me that I would forever denounce The Lord. What happened had just the opposite effect. Instead of blaming God for the wreck I praised him for keeping me alive. I praised him for letting it happen at 7am when there was a shift change and we would have twice as many people to take care of us. I praised him for letting it happen in the parking lot of a fire dept. I praised him for that great big fireman that finally found me. I praised him for letting it happen in Birmingham, Al where they have one of the highest rated trauma teams in the nation. I praised him for giving me an orthopedist that is rated 5th in the nation. I praised him for letting me live after getting hit by an SUV.
Let’s fast forward a couple of years, May 2006, I had had 10 surgeries at this point and was unable to walk without crutches at all. My middle son is getting ready to graduate. I had felt something shift in my hip and had went to see my doc. We drove 180 miles each way to see this doctor at least once a month, sometimes more. My pelvis had shifted and a piece of bone was laying across my femoral artery and another piece of bone was pushing into my bladder. One wrong move and I would bleed to death before anyone even knew anything was wrong. I had a CT scan to verify where everything was in preparation for my surgery. In all the other surgeries my doctor had never once said, “Get your affairs in order” but he did this time. I refused to have the surgery until after my son graduated so it was scheduled for June 16, 2006. I was on total bed rest, not allowed to do anything at all. If I fell I was to go straight to the closest ER. I was not allowed to be alone for even the smallest amount of time.. In May, Cody, my middle son, had gotten saved. He was really proud of it and I didn’t discourage it. We started going to church. I decided it was time for me to be saved and to get baptized. On June 4, 2006 I was at the church. The Baptismal was behind the pulpit. You had to go up 10 steps to get to it, then down 4 steps to get into it, get baptized, then walk across to the other side, go up 5 stairs, then down 10 more. Being on crutches I was terrified of the steps. I used my crutches to get up the first 10 steps and down into the baptismal. Terry was supposed to go around and meet me on the other side with my crutches but he wasn’t there. I didn’t want to just stand there cold and wet with everyone looking at me so I walked across the baptismal, up the 5 stairs and down the other 10 stairs without the aid of crutches! I had not been able to do that before then or since then ever again. The following Wednesday we went to the prayer meeting. I had never been to one and really didn’t know what to expect. The pastor had all the women come down and put their hands on me and each one said a prayer for me. You could feel the power in the air!
My surgery was supposed to take 8-10 hours, use 4-6 units of blood, and me be in the ICU for a few days. It actually took less than 4 hours, used no blood and I was home in 3 days. My doctor told me that if he hadn't known better that my CT scan was from someone else, that once he got in there he didn't see near the scar tissue that the scan had shown was there.
I still can’t walk but I feel God and Christ in my life every day. Like I said, I am living, breathing proof of miracles.
Edit on 11/23/10:
God has decided that I am not worthy of even one day without pain. In fact, things are getting worse every day. I've decided that God hates me and frankly, at this point I don't care.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
