Rant about Smoking

I have to get this off my chest, as it's been festering for nearly a week now...

Last week, a lovely woman that has worked with my company for over 20 years came to clean out her desk and say goodbye to her many friends and co-workers. She isn't retiring. She's dying. She weighs less than 80 lbs. and is almost too weak to walk. She's been through treatment after treatment since her cancer was discovered 2 years ago, but there is no hope left.

Her husband and daughter came with her, certainly for moral support but also to help her walk down the halls. Her husband has aged 100 years in the past 2; her daughter looks as fragile as spun sugar. She is trying to be supportive of her father, and help her mother leave this world. She is hoping that her mom hangs on until Thanksgiving, but it's a very dim hope.

This dear, wonderful woman is 54 years old.

3 months ago, I lost my sister in law. Same story, and nearly the same age: 56. Months of physical agony during treatments and recovery from treatments and then the dread of MORE treatments. Finally, the horrid realization that there was no more fight left, and that awful wait until the end.

I should have been prepared, of course, because it's all very familiar. I watched my mother leave this world at 60 years of age. I watched her cry in pain for 2 1/2 years. I went with her to countless medical appointments. I watched her wittle away to 48 lbs.

Do you know what they all had in common? Their cancers all began as lung cancer. They all smoked.

They knew the risks. Hell, they sometimes (before the diagnosis) joked about the risk. "Gotta go sometime", "Nobody lives forever", "Hell, everything gives you cancer so it doesn't matter what I do", "My (fill in the blank with father, mother, grandfather, whomever) smoked for 70 years and never even had a cold." That one is my favorite.

Yes, it's a free flippin' country and everyone has a right to do whatever they want. Yet, I'm angry. I'm angry because I know I never want to see my children look the way the children of these women looked when the end was near for their mothers. I don't want to cause my husband the pain that I've seen on the faces of the men who promised to love, honor and cherish in sickness and in health. I'm so ANGRY! How dare they! How dare they risk their precious selves over a damned cigarette!

No, not every smoker is going to die of lung cancer. If I don't wear a seatbelt, I am not destined to be in a car accident either, but I wear my seatbelt anyway because I don't want to take that chance. It's not worth it. Cigarettes aren't worth it either.

Nope, no guarantees how long we're going to be here. I know that. I know we're all going to die sometime. But if you smoke, you should also acknowledge that you're willing to cause your loved ones excruciating pain to enjoy your addiction, to live within your addiction, to take the easy way out. The fact is that once you die, it's over for you....you'll go on (hopefully, ya little dickens) to a better place. Yet your family will spend countless weeks or months cloaked in sadness, crying themselves to sleep, having nightmares, battling depression. Just when they might begin to get a handle on it, along comes a holiday or birthday or anniversary, and they'll slide back again. They'll feel guilty for not confronting you about those damned cigarettes, even though they knew it would cause a fight. They'll spend hours thinking of all they'd give up to have you back for just one more day, and wonder why, oh Lord WHY, could you have not given up the thing that took you away from them?

If you love your family, really love them, please don't gamble with your life. You don't think it will happen to you? Look at the statistics. Maybe the numbers are flawed, but there's one thing for sure: those aren't just numbers; they're mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons, daughters, cousins, friends...they're people that are sorely missed, and have left a trail of heartbreak behind them.

I'm done now. I don't really feel better, but I've cried it out and that's a start.

I lost my Mother to lung cancer back in 1999, yet other relatives of mine are still smoking even after my Uncle (her brother) died a few months later of throat cancer.

I've had arguments with people who say that there isn't any proof of smoking causing cancer, that any studies conducted will find what they set out looking for. Of course one person in particular is a smoker whom I wish would quit. It's hard to know that someone you love is doing something that could potentially kill them.

I've been smoking for three years and quit yesterday, unlike most people I ran into problems fairly quick. I started having some respitory problems, not to mention I can't afford cigarettes and It worries Mattie and my mother to death. Its hard to quit, believe me, nicotene is one of the most powerfully addictive drugs out there even among the illegal ones.

I've lost a couple people even being as young as I am to cancer due to smoking. David, like you said some people will argue that and its true. Studies may show that smoking is related to cancer, but these are correllational studies and causality can never be drawn from a correllation. The fact is though, that with such a strong correllation, its not logical to argue against it.

To everyone that smokes, please try your best to quit for those you love, they'll support you.

My dad died of cancer many years ago when my 18 year old son was just a baby. He smoked and got influenza. Then he started to get sicker and sicker. He would almost cough a lung up sometimes. He hung around a long time and waisted away. My day who was around in his 50's looked like a 100 year old man. Now my 18 year old son has taken on this bad habit and no matter what I say or anyting else he continues to be stupid. He had been rushed into the hospital and was found to have spontaneous lung collapse and was told by the doctor to never smoke. When he got out of the hospital he started again. It makes me so mad but no matter how much I ask him to quit he gives all the excuses that everyone does. They don't know how much it hurts us to also.

I was a long time smoker and a heavy one at that. It was not uncommon for me to go through 2-3 packs a day. I got chronic bouts of bronchitis that sometimes led to pnuemonia, but it didn't stop me. The day I found out I was pregnant was the day I quit until 6 months after she was born. Then it was a smoke on the weekends at work. Now I have asthma that I am trying to get under control and allergies. I know the actions of my past has led to the results of my present. When my daughter is old enough, we will have the discussion of smoking and all the things that come with it. Hopefully her seeing what it has done to me will help her take the right path.

I suppose it wouldn't be right to not tell the rest of the story.

Yesterday was the company Christmas Party. We still say "Christmas" at my company, not "Holiday"...and even though we have non-Christians in our midst, they manage to remain unoffended in this overly PC world....but that is another subject, I suppose.

There was much talk about our cancer ravaged co-worker. Several had tried to encourage her to attend yesterday, offering transportation assistance and reassurance that wheelchairs be damned, she would be a welcome sight. She declined, but asked those people to make sure she got "all the good stories". She tried valiantly to maintain her spirits, even though her body was failing quickly.

During the annual slideshow full of photos notable and not from the past year, there was more than one tear shed when this lovely woman's face flashed on the screen. Although the pictures of her were less than a year old, they were taken when the overwhelming feelings were of staunch resolve to "beat this thing". Looking at those pictures move across the screen, it was unfathomable to realize how things have changed in such a short period of time.

Service awards were given out, and as it happened she was awarded one for having the best money saving idea of the year. The Director of her department accepted it on her behalf, and went straight from the party to her home to give it to her and to recount "all the good stories".

She never heard the stories. As her Director arrived, she tried to stand up to welcome him, and she collapsed.

Lots of tears were shed last night, lots of glasses were raised in her memory, and there is probably a shortage of tequila in this town this morning.

I am so glad it's over for her. Relieved for her husband and daughter, and grateful that her pain has come to an end. I will never forget her, just as I'll never forget the others that I've lost to this horrible disease. I only hope that someone is able to learn the lesson that she paid such a high tuition for.

Its a sad thing to lose someone you care about. You want them to never to go away, to keep fighting even though they are in pain. But even in the pain of loss you know it was better for the person to let go. They now no longer suffer and are at peace. I wish everyone who smoked could realize this could happen to them and to stop. Maybe this would prevent them from getting cancer, maybe their families won't have to suffer a loss. Everyone says it won't happen to me. But why take the chance. My sympathies go out to her family and friends.

I'm not sure how I missed this thread when it was first posted. My mother was a relatively light smoker (10-15 cigarettes/day) and she died from primary lung cancer at age 54. The cancer had throughout her skeleton before she even had a cough, making it stage IV at the time of diagnosis. She lasted about six months, the last six weeks as a paraplegic from a spinal cord compression related to a vertebral/epidural metastasis. We cared for her at home and she died on a Saturday night, a few weeks before I graduated from medical school. She never met her grandchildren and her mother outlived her only daughter by three plus years.

This year my then 48 year old brother, also a light smoker who had quit 16 months earlier, was diagnosed with lung cancer. His case was rather unique and for us nothing short of a miracle, as when they removed the upper lobe of his right lung the "tumor" (as described grossly by the surgeon and the pathologist and as previously diagnosed on biopsy as malignant) contained only inflammatory cells with no evidence of malignancy. He recently turned 49 and has a clean bill of health.

People who argue that smoking does not cause lung cancer need look at only one statistic. Roughly 90% of newly diagnosed cases of lung cancer occur in current or recent smokers despite smokers representing a much smaller percentage of the population than 90% (http://www.cdc.gov/Tobacco/research_...ev/prevali.htm). The other roughly 10% can be accounted for by such causes as asbestos, radon, family history, and plain old bad luck.

I'm glad your brother is OK. It just makes me crazy when I hear people complain about the smoking ban in Ohio. I think it's great, years and years we went to restaurants and had to deal with people smoking. Now it has changed and they can do nothing but complain about it. What they can't seem to get into their head is even an occasional smoker can get lung cancer so why take the chance.

It's still fresh in my mind when we had a smoking and a non-smoking section in an airplane. It was something completely ridiculous an unfair fro non-smokers. By the time your trip was over you had inhaled enough smoke equivalent to at least a pack of cigarettes.