Help!! The State of Michigan Is Trying To Kill Me!

I have had a love/hate relationship with the state of Michigan since I was a child.

Not every year - thank God - but too MANY years of my childhood I was dragged to Mount Pleasant from whatever other state was my home at the time. My grandparents were the original Odd Couple; they couldn't live together and they couldn't live apart!? They were married, divorced, each married someone else, divorced THEM and then remarried one another.

The ultimate irony was that, even after their re-marriage they lived separately; my grandma lived in the town of MP while my grampa lived at Coldwater Lake. He would come into town once a week for "lunch", euphemistically speaking, get some supplies and head back to the lake before dark.

Gram I loved but Grampa was an unpleasant sort of cold fish. The cottage was a nightmare to me (damp, cold, musty) as was the lake (mucky bottom, lots of tangled weeds). I kept my head in a book the whole miserable time I spent there and could only dream of escape.

Eventually my father was transferred to Grand Rapids where I finished the last five months of high school before going on to Michigan State. LOVED MSU and found Tom there; he was born and bred in Detroit AND he was a Taurus so there was never any question that's where he wanted to live when we both finished school.

I knew there were other much lovlier environs than Farm Brook and Chandler Park Drive "out there" and suggested we investigate some alternatives but it soon became clear to me Detroit would be my home.

Have you BEEN THERE???

Pretty, picturesque, scenic it is not.

It's a grid of streets running N/S and E/W with very little to be recommended regardless of the direction you take.

No one was ever happier to retire to Florida than I! Palm trees, blue skies, endless sunny days... these are not a part of the Michigan scenario.

I'm back here for 15 days to take care of and love my family still living in the area. They are the ONLY thing that could ever drag me back here!

And I'm pretty sure now that Michigan feels as negatively about ME as I do about IT!?

I think it's trying to kill me.

Less than 24 hours after I arrived I starting losing my voice. On day two I started wheezing. I haven't wheezed at night like this in almost four years!?? Those of you with asthma know that when you can hear yourself rattle breathing in AND breathing out you're probably in trouble.

That's me right now.

It makes sleeping an impossibility which is so not a good thing when Grandma is in charge of multiple young children over multiple days!!

I called my allergist in Sarasota this morning and she couldn't prescribe over the phone without seeing/hearing me up close and personal so an Urgent Care facility
is in my near future. I'm hoping for scripts for Prednisone and a new breathing machine with lots of albuterol to ease my symptoms.

Keep your fingers crossed. I beat this rotten state before and I think I can do it again.

I think I can... I think I can... I think I can....