Over the past few months, I've been having some odd allergy problems. My doctor and I seem to have narrowed it down to a cleaning product used on tiles on the ground floor of my house.

This has been getting worse, and on Friday, and then again, to a lesser extent, this morning, I found myself unable to breathe. I was gasping for breath, and it wasn't enough. When I left the house, and breathed outside for a while, it got better. The doctor thinks it is allergic asthma.

But this did make me appreciate my breath. I tried focusing on my breath to calm down when these episodes were happening, but as the French say, "c'était plus fort que moi."

Breathing is important...