thoughts about a smoker

[HowardH]

It's quickly coming up to the two year anniversary of my father's passing and not a day goes by where I don't have a thought about him.  He was a 30 year smoker but he quit in 1983.  However, the damage was done and he suffered from COPD and eventually it was lung cancer that took his life.  I often see young people smoking and I want to tell them it's a mistake, it will eventually take their health and maybe their lives but I keep my distance and let them live as they see fit.  Dying from lung cancer is not pretty.  It's one of the most painful deaths you can imagine.  You know the stuff that killed Prince? It was Fentanyl.  It's in a class of narcotics that's considered stronger than morphine and heroin.  My dad had to take that... along with other strong painkillers.  They didn't work that well.  If his levels got a little low, he was in horrific pain.  I wanted to scream at the hospital people during a visit to hurry up and get him his meds, he couldn't bring his own from home and the effects had worn off.  He was shaking from the pain.  No son should ever see their father like that.  The cancer attacked everything... his lungs, his shoulder, his leg bones, his brain and even his big toe!  When he started smoking in the early 50's, no one knew about the long term health issues it caused, it was fashionable.  We don't have that excuse any longer.  Why someone would want to poison themselves on a daily basis is beyond me but that's their business.  If you don't smoke, good for you, it you do, again that's your business but please consider the effects it will have on your family down the road.  I lived through it.  It's not pretty.  I decided to write this because I was speaking to my office's receptionist, a very nice young lady in her early 20's and I caught the smell of smoke on her breath.  I may say something to her, then again, I may not but it made me think of my father and how my family lost him unnecessarily, it could have been avoided.  In about a week, I'll go to the National Cemetery where he's buried to pay my respects and regret the time that stolen from all of us.  A life ended too soon. 

 

[Kev]

[member=396]HowardH[/member] I feel it buddy.

I lost my mum in a similar way, but from the sound of it my mum went a lot quicker. She started smoking just before WW2 and gave it up it the late 80's. Still the damage was done. She was a tough old bird and we had no idea she was suffering immensely until my sister took her to the doctor (I lived in a different state) and found out she had cancer literally growing out of her back .. her entire body was riddled with cancer and she only lasted 6 weeks from that point.

The cancer killed her 25 years after she'd given up smoking.

My 22 year old daughter smokes (lives with a loser - that's another story) and my 21 year old son has the odd cigarette when he's out drinking with friends, despite the miserable and painful death of not only my mother, my father in law died from it too (his was heart disease as a result of being a heavy smoker when he was younger). My father in law's passing was probably more tragic as his mind went early, leading to a long drawn out period of gradual decay, watching it eat away at my wife and her mother.

The tobacco industry is evil, but then the soft drink industry isn't much better. Funny how the planet is constantly at war over religion and politics, yet the corporates are the ones that are not only killing us by the millions, they're profiting all the while as it happens.

 

[alkaline]

It's the sad truth. But each of us has a choice.

 

[Sparktrician]

Kev, I must say that the medical community shares the blame for not coming out in opposition sooner.  I recall my dad having issues with angina in the early 70s.  I called his doctor to get a fill-in.  I asked the doc, "Why don't you tell him to quit smoking?"  The response was, "He's a grown man.  He can do what he wants."  I asked, "Have you forgotten your Hippocratic oath?"  The quack ethically-challenged practitioner hung up on me, yet he'd had the temerity to call me collect.