pegkerr | Sad news, a warning to others

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Sad news, a warning to others

I just learned today that Paula C., a secretary who used to work in our office, has stage IV lung cancer, which has spread to her spine. One of the other secretaries in our office went out to lunch with her a couple of months ago, heard her coughing, and said, "Geez, you better get that checked out." A month ago, they decided she had pneumonia and she was hospitalized. It was then, presumably, that they discovered the worst.

Just a short while ago she was going about her ordinary life, going to work, going out to lunch with friends. Today she lies in a hospital bed on the brink of death, so doped up on medication for the pain that she doesn't even know that people are there.

She is only 45. Of course, she smoked.

I remember her as a spunky, funny lady, with an infectious whisky laugh, who loved to bowl.

Please, my friends, if you smoke, quit. If you don't, then for the love of Pete, don't start. Don't be offended if I tell you I don't want you to end up like her. It's too late for Paula, but not for you.

I remember when I was offered a cigarette by a kid I knew in 7th grade. I told him no, because I didn't want to get hooked. "I can quit anytime I want," he boasted, puffing on a cigarette himself.

When I saw him at our 20th high school reunion, I reminded him of that conversation. "Oh god," he told me, "it was a good thing you turned me down. I want to quit, but I can't."

I think of that special St. Lucia's Day surprise I got from the girls this morning. I might have been giving up a lifetime of moments like that if I had taken that first proferred cigarette. Forty-five--that's exactly my age.

If you have quit, please tell me how long it took you, and how you managed it.

What a terrible waste.

Edited to add: This was passed on today by someone who spoke with her husband:

"I talked to Joe last night for quite some time and Joe said Paula will not be coming home, she may not make it until Christmas. He's meeting with the doctors today and they are going to make the decision on whether to continue care."

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I smoked in high school and quit in college. It was an organic process; my college friends were not like my high school friends, and they were good in social settings about encouraging me to not smoke, rather than the high school friends who encouraged me TO smoke.

My parents were both heavy smokers, and it contributed to both their deaths. My father had a form of throat cancer that is seen almost exclusively in people with a long history of heavy smoking and alcohol use; my mother had emphysema.

I always hated the smoke--and I had almost constant upper respiratory trouble till I moved out at 19. I have never had a single puff of tobacco--nor, despite coming of age in the '60s, of anything else.

My mother quit by using the patch when she came to live with us, but the emphysema had already restricted how she lived her life. I look at my MIL, who has never smoked and who is active at 78, and think of what my mother's life might have been like (she died at not quite 76).

Something I forgot to say: my mother always thought that as long as her lungs showed no tumors (i.e., she didn't have lung cancer), she was fine. In her later years, she said, "No one ever talked about emphysema and how bad it is."

Well, it's bad. She lived with us the last 5-1/2 years of her life, and it's bad. One good thing: living with her guaranteed, I think, that my kids will never smoke.

I don't know how long it took her, but my great-aunt quit smoking at 80. She's lived to 93 so far, and her doctor says that her lungs have healed themselves to a remarkable degree. I mention this because I've known people who hit a big birthday ending in 0 or 5 and decided that there was no longer a point. Onie doesn't wheeze any more. She goes out and clears the ice off her own walk, though we wish she wouldn't.

(No longer a point to trying to quit, I meant.)

I smoked consistently twice in my life. I smoked three or four cigarettes a day for a couple of years in college. In college everyone thinks they're immortal. Two years later, I quit in the course of an argument with the man I lived with. I accused him of lack of discipline and he replied, in effect, "Sez the smoker." I stopped that night and didn't smoke for years. I don't think he ever did quit. He's now recovering from a serious stroke that left his language skills and memory seriously impaired.

The second time was in New York, back in the days when you could smoke in your office. When I checked in each morning, my boss offered me a cigarette. I took it to be companionable and because I felt that a cigarette couldn't do much more damage than the foul air. In the course of the day I had one or two more, though I hardly ever smoked more than half. I quit because I moved away and the five minutes of companionship was no longer there.

I smoked a little for the months around Lydia's moving in. It was one of the few things the two of us shared during that period and initially I wished to connect any way I could. Cigarettes are now inseparable in my mind from the nightmare of those months. I haven't had a cigarette since February, and expect I never will again.

I don't need the lecture about how I shouldn't have done it. I know.

and because I felt that a cigarette couldn't do much more damage than the foul air.

The sad thing is, you're probably not wrong about the air quality.

I started smoking when I was fourteen years old. A motley crew of loners, stoners, head bangers, and other misfits hung out at the McDonald's, smoking before and after school. I didn't fit in with the cheerleaders or the geeks or the jocks. I sure fit in with the misfits, though, so I started smoking and hanging out with them. I got a bad head rush if I smoked more than one cigarette, even if I had the time for it, so I was a light smoker when I started. But by my twenty-first birthday, I was going on three packs a day. I was the worst kind of chain smoker. I literally lit one cigarette off of the last one, and sometimes I unknowingly had more than one cigarette lit at a time.

I tried to quit. Several times. I tried cold turkey. I tried cutting back. I tried substituting lolipops or anything else for cigarettes. None of it worked. I finally quit twice. I quit once for my husband and then I quite again for myself.

My then-fiance told me that if I was going to keep smoking, he'd rather just give me his gun to do myself in right away. And then he told me that he would never marry a smoker. I loved him (still do), and I knew he was right and that I should quit anyway. So I did. I bought the patch (but smoked while I was on it) and I used a hypnosis tape and I quit for him.

But my husband's job occasionally required him to go on out-of-town business trips. I'd get stressed, and buy a pack of cigarettes just to get me through his absence. Or I'd go visit my friends back East, all smokers still, and they all smoked around me so I lit up when I was with them too. I told myself that I was "very good" about my smoking. I never fell completely off the wagon, I just got dragged behind it a few times. I probably smoked a carton of cigarettes in the first eight or so years that we were married. Compared to my carton-a-week habit, I was very good about my smoking. But I knew I hadn't really quit either.

Then I quit for myself. My husband and I joined the Mormon church after years of talking to the missionaries and each other about it. We were asked if we would follow what's called the Word of Wisdom -- guidelines by which we choose to live our lives. One of those guidelines is no smoking. So I made a promise to God, and myself, that I would never smoke again. It's been over four years now since my last cigarette and I've never looked back.

For me, it was all about what's more important? When it was just me, all on my own, I knew the health risks, but I smoked anyway. My health wasn't important enough to make me stop. When faced between the choice of marrying the man I loved or smoking for the rest of my life, I decided that he was more important than smoking. Obviously, he wasn't important enough to stop completely though, just mostly. But once I made that promise to God, that was that. That was the only thing that was truly important enough to me to make me stop for good.

it really upsets me how many people around campus smoke. i constantly smell it, and while i don't smoke, i know that second-hand smoke is just as dangerous to my health.

i actually just read a random journal entry this afternoon by someone whose grandfather died a year ago from smoking. he died in a very painful way and she ended by saying "if you don't want to die like my grandfather did--don't smoke".

i don't know if my mom will post about this, but she smoked for two years in college. she and her friends did it casually, not really taking it seriously. before they knew it they were addicted. she quit for my dad who said he wouldn't date a smoker.

I think we posted at the same time!

I smoked for only two years, but was up to a pack a day by the time I quit. I quit on November 2, 1974. I wanted to quit, but I always found some excuse not to. D and I had been dating for about six months at the time. One day he told me that he couldn't stand the smoking, and that he could not date someone who smoked. That was a good enough reason for me to quit. I quit cold turkey and never had another cigarette. I still love the smell of a cigarette that has just been lit . . . scary after all these years. But I will never, ever, smoke again.

I'm so sorry about your friend, Peg. That is a horrible, horrible diagnosis to cope with. I hope that she and her friends have the support that they all need.

*puts on work hat* I want to share something with you. You're absolutely right to encourage everyone not to smoke.

1,300,000 people are diagnosed with cancer every year. 1/3 of those cancers are caused by smoking. That means that 433,333 people get cancer *every single year* because of cigarettes. Not just lung cancer, oral cancers, cancer of the mouth organs, esophogeal cancer, tracheal cancer, or cancer of the bronchii -- research findings over the last year show conclusive evidence that exposure to second-hand smoke is a leading cause of breast cancer in women under age 35.

*takes off work hat*

I was a smoker in college. Sort of intentionally -- but more by accident. I was a "theatre person," and I desperately wanted to fit in. I auditioned for a role, and was cast as a character who chainsmoked her way through the play. I spent eight weeks smoking a pack of cigarettes in rehearsals every single night, practicing to inhale, then deliver a line, then exhale the smoke. (You can't do that if you're "faking it.") The day after the theatre went dark, I found myself reaching for a pack of cigarettes.

And panicked.

And then quit, cold turkey.

It was hard. Very hard. Partially because I have an addictive personality, but moreso because I so desperately wanted to spend time with the other people who were my friends -- or who I wanted as my friends. But I couldn't stand to be around them as they smoked.

I had to change everything after that -- how and when I ate, who I spent time with, what I wore and didn't wear at various times -- to get rid of the triggers. And I'd only been a smoker for two months!

Now I work under a contract that stipulates if I'm caught smoking, I will lose my job, publicly. I see and talk to people every day who are dying because they chose cigarettes over anything else that could have been available.

Your friend Paula is one of many people who are dying from a horrible, horrible illness that is 100% preventable. Educating our peers, our friends, our neighbors, our children, and perfect strangers is the only way to stop this madness from taking over.

*puts work hat back on*

If you know anyone who wants to quit and is having problems, let them know to keep trying -- it takes the average smoker five to seven tries to give up for good. And if they need advice, ideas, or help, they can call 1.800.ACS.2345 24/7 and speak with a trained professional.

Thanks for that information.

Almost exactly two years ago my mother went to the hospital with a cough, and because she'd blacked out. It was lung cancer; the black-out was caused by metastasized tumors in her brain. Three months later she was dead. She had smoked most of her life, until 10 years before her death. It wasn't enough.

The most common site of metastases in lung cancer is to the brain. And most people who have LC don't discover it until they are late stage, or it has spread to the brain. Since there are no chemotherapy drugs that effectively cross the barrier into the brain and work on the tumors, that's pretty much it. I'm so sorry to hear about your mom :(

Thanks. She was worried about bone cancer--she was afraid of the pain. She had gamma knife treatments to reduce the brain tumors, but it didn't work. She died without pain, calm, with us children holding her. She was 63.

Will smoked socially (ie if out drinking) after college, on and off for a year or so. He once decided to try smoking while sober, hated it, and never smoked again. My grandparents both smoked pipes occasionally when they were younger, but that was before my time. They've been in perfect health, lungwise.

Smoking is the one thing I think my father would have honestly disowned me for. From very early on he told me in no uncertain terms that smoking was a "filthy, disgusting habit," that it made you stink, that it made you addicted, that the cigarette companies were liars who would do anything to get you hooked, on and on. Not that smoking was ever a temptation for me, but my dad made sure I knew straight off just how bad the stuff was. He still boycotts any company owned by RJ Reynolds or other tobacco companies; I don't know how he'd find out that KFC or Mrs Smith pies or whatever was owned by them, but suddenly he wouldn't buy their products for love or money. Then, abruptly, a few years later, they'd be sold to some other parent company, and he'd go back to them again.

We've already started explaining to MiniPlu that cigarettes are yucky and make you stink and make you sick. The problem is that Will's younger brother smokes (he's been hooked since high school, apparently). He's tried several times to quit without success; however, he's lost a lot of weight in the past few years, I think with an eye for trying again to quit in the (supposedly) near future - so if he regains weight in the attempt, at least he wasn't already overweight to start with. But, anyway - we're trying to malign the smoking without maligning my BIL in MiniPlu's eyes, since he's great with her and she loves him. We've said she can tell Paul "I want you to be around so I can play with you forever".

I told my kids when they were very young that only people who should smoke are those without lungs. It was mainly to put a silly spin on an otherwise serious issue. It was a while before they realized that Uncle Tom did indeed have lungs, and still smoked, but it made an impression on them.

I stopped in '78, I started in '60. The reason I stopped was I literally couldn't get one to my mouth, both arms had pins and casts. The heavy period of my smoking was in the USAF in SE Asia. I'm glad I quit ... though I still miss a pipe sometimes.

If that's not enough to make anyone quit, seeing a smoker's lung is. I took the kids to see "The Bodies" exhibition at our local science museum. They had a healthy set of lungs right next to the blck charred set of smoker's lungs. Ick. My Father-in-law died of lung cancer, and it was diagnosed in a similar manner. He'd had this persistant cough, but was otherwise fine in May (1992) and by September he had passed away. By the time he was diagnosed there was nothing they could do.

Anyway ... I echo your plea against smoking.

"I want to quit but I can't" is just not a valid response any more. There are effective pharmaceutical options to help people get through the cravings. All that guy has to do is go to his doctor and he can be presented with a whole wall of options for quitting help. Anyone who says they want to quit nicotine addiction but can't, is really saying "I don't really want to quit enough to actually do it, or I just don't know how."

Z says tons of kids in his school smoke. He says the anti-smoking propaganda just makes it seem cool. He doesn't smoke, thank goodness, but he knows a lot of kids who do.

I think they should be fair to smokers and give them equal time in schools -- they give the anti-smoking case with the lungs and so on, then they should invite local smokers to give the pro-smoking case. It would be better if they didn't select attractive people like

sdn but rather the most middle-aged and unattractive people they can find, to go in with their smokers coughs and tell the kids it's great and, hey, they're not dead yet.

There's something really wrong with a culture that says reading is stupid and smoking is cool.

When I was old enough to ask why I only had one grandfather but had two grandmothers, my mother explained that my other grandfather had died 7 years before I was born because he'd smoked. He was a product of his era, a 2-pack-a-day man, and he died of lung cancer in the early 60s. My mother never smoked, though her brother took it up, and my maternal grandmother didn't smoke either. (Nanny lived to 97; she was the oldest of six children, but she outlived all of her siblings who all smoked.) Mom's brother gave up smoking a few years ago, but his wife continues to smoke.

When I was somewhat older, my father told me that his parents had smoked, and so had he when he was younger. However, my grandmother partly dislocated her retina with her smoker's cough, and when my father heard about the diagnosis, he quit cold turkey that day. Both my grandparents gave it up as well. My grandfather lived to 84, and my grandmother lived to 87.

I've never even been tempted to pick up a cigarette.

For a year in the early 90s, I worked as a temp at a place that essentially encouraged its employees to smoke (they printed labels for Phillip Morris, B&W, and other major cigarette companies). I came home reeking of smoke every night, and my asthma got worse and worse. In retrospect, I'm glad they decided to dump the temp, because I was able to get away from the smoke (I could never leave on my own so long as this place paid more than any other place for the work I could do -- a whopping $7/hour). I wonder about that place sometimes; whether they still allow smoking in the plant (the most frightening sight I've ever been witness to was two men hauling open 55 gallon drums of ink and solvent... with cigarettes dangling from their mouths), and whether the guy who taught me my job is still alive, or if he's gone down, like so many others, with cardiovascular or pulmonary illnesses.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. I just lost a friend to brain cancer m'self.

We tell Kelly the truth: she only has one surviving grandparent, the one who didn't smoke. Both her grandfathers, and my mother, were killed by cigarettes before they had a chance to see her.

I smoked for 11 years. Pack a day for the last 5 of them How I quit? It's silly, but somebody bet me that I couldn't. And now I have. It will be 5 years in February. I quit cold turkey. Put on 40 pounds in the process, but I did it. (have recently taken off 20 of them...)
Mind over matter. Pride. Something. The prick who bet me I couldn't probably saved my life. hmmm. And yes, I have thanked him.

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Sad news, a warning to others

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smoking