It's an Ozone Action Alert Day in Chicago

Day 2 of the first two of the summer...which means all you people with asthma, watch out. I don't have the girls tonight and I could sure benefit from the therapy of the lakefront, but I'd better hold off. I don't need anymore setbacks. This is the kind of thing that can send me into a bad way for a month. I haven't had a respiratory infection in a long time and don't want to get one. For some reason, environmental things really get to me. In the 1990's and 00's, I used to get bronchitis every year like CLOCKWORK.

What time is it?

In 2000 (yes, I realize this was a long time ago) I ran for a whole week in July hot weather in NYC along Riverside Drive, which is basically perched above the heavily traveled Westside Highway (which is very much like our beloved Lakeshore Drive.) I got back home and within a week I was wheezing. Within a month I was diagnosed with bronchitis yet again. Heat + Pollution = a huge no-no from the doctor. By month 2, the antibiotics stopped working. I couldn't talk on the phone, any laugh would send me into a coughing spell. And I would wake up gasping for air thinking "OMG this is it! I'm dying!" I finally went back to the doctor who put me on steroids! And finally after 10 days of that, I was cured. In OCTOBER. Yay, steroids! So anyway, I tend to take these things more seriously than I used to. I'm not trying to end up like the inimitable Sweet Brown:

p.s. I wasn't sure if it was dieing or dying. the urban dictionary broke it down for me in definition 1 quite plainly.