As much as I enjoy visiting Las Vegas, I can’t say it’s the healthiest place in the world for a vacation, especially not for me and my lung issues.  With all the excessive walking and continuous consumption of alcohol, food, and the large numbers of smokers, the air quality, especially inside the casinos, might just be the death of me.

As I was panting on the way back to our room from a long day, and regretting the fact that I had not brought a portable oxygen with me, we coincidentally spotted a small nook with colorful bubbly liquid  and a big sign that says “oxygen bar”. I thought to myself, “well, if only that’s real oxygen!” It turns out that the powers that be from above heard me, and it was, in fact, just what I needed, real oxygen.

The place looks just like a real bar. In front of each bar stool  was a small apparatus with several plastic cylinders filled with colored liquids, and a small control panel with a series of dials. The hot, friendly bartender (if you can call her that) explained how the session works. You pay for oxygen based on a fixed period of time— US$10 for 10 minutes or $20 for 20 minutes. Each customer gets a nasal cannula (a thin plastic tube that goes over the ears and has nozzles that fit loosely into each nostril – just like the one I have at home from the hospital). This is attached to the apparatus with the cylinders, each of which contains flavored, aromatheraphy water. Oxygen is fed through the liquid and then into the cannula; you choose which scent or combination of scents you’d like using the dials—choices included scents like eucalyptus, lavender, and lemon.

And so I began breathing. This isn’t something new to me since I do this at home all the time, but I felt like I look rather silly wearing tubes in my nose, in public. In bars, people usually know how to look at each other and carry on a conversation. But those rules don’t seem to apply at an oxygen bar. It feels very unnatural to have a casual conversation with someone when you’re both tethered by the nose to a bubbling machine. Later on, the bartender offered a series of different massages and oils to enhance and heighten the experience.