PART FOUR Mom's Demise

I had come to the point of just hating it. I hate the smell. I hate that all too familiar burning in my throat with every puff. I hate the taste. I hate that I want it. I hate that I think I need it.

I want to quit. I've tried so many times before.... The Patch, The Gum, The Lozenge....

I even tried Chantix. I spent $180 (plus my doctor's fee) and was sick as a dog for two weeks. I thought, "If it's gonna make me this sick, I'll just smoke." There's rational thinking for ya. Don't get me wrong--Chantix works very well for many people with a 40% success rate. It just didn't work for me.

Even Mom tried it a year and a half ago. On January 9th, 2007 (coincidentally, Shawn's birthday) both my parents had decided to quit. Dad had a couple rough weeks and Mom stayed diligent on Chantix. She still smoked while on the Chantix, but much, much less. She said she really didn't want to smoke.

Dad used a combination of the nicotine lozenge and the nicotine gum & quit successfully. Smoking was banned inside their house & we all worried that we reeked of cigarettes. It didn't bother them. To Dad, it was just a scent. Not a good smell, or a bad smell....just a smell.

To Mom, the smell stunk so bad! This is more common for someone who's quit.

Then, in April I got a phone call that Dad was in the emergency room with a horrible headache. Man, what a night.

After running some tests, the doctor came back and said Dad had an aneurysm. We bawled & cried. Later, the doctor came back and said Dad had a tumor. We bawled & cried. (My grandmother died from a brain tumor the size of pin head--it brought back terrible memories for us all)

Finally, the doctor came back a third time and said there was a tumor on the outside of Dad's grain but it regarded further investigating. No one in the emergency room apparently had seen anything like it.

Through all this, we gathered in the parking lot and smoked a lot of cigarettes. Mom practically begged us for one.

"If no one gives me one I'm gonna drive to the store to some anyway! And I'm such a mess I could get in a wreck , but I don't care right now!"

Or something to that effect. My sister & I had watched our mom care for her mother for almost a year. We saw the pain in Mom's eyes as she watched her own mother die a little more each day. For her to imagine going through this with her husband would be unbearable. And quitting smoking at a time like this was unbearable.

I handed Mom a cigarette and a lighter. "Thank you," she managed through her sobbing.

We all knew she would be in her truck within five minuets if someone had not done it. And we all worried she would end up in a massive wreck. I don't think any of us could have handled that on top of everything.

I didn't contribute to her starting smoking again--she would have done it anyway. Anyone one of us would have handed her one to keep her from driving. She was doing so well, too. We'd never seen Mom be able to go without cigarettes and do so well! It was almost as depressing as learning that Dad had some rare growth in his brain. She would only be killing herself slowly.

But then, who were we to judge? Me, Shawn, my sister Sheila--and Bob who is married to Sheila and is also Shawn's brother. We were all smoking. Puffing like it would relieve the stress, relieve the hurt.

It never does.

Over the week, Dad went back to his doctor a few times, I think. His doctor had finally thrown out her medical books and the Internet and finally came across what was in Dad's brain:

Non-Aneurysmal Sub-Arachnoid Hemorrhage (I think--I lost the paper I had scrawled it on so long ago)

Only 100 cases have been diagnosed worldwide. "You could search the Internet for hours and hours and not find one article on it," she told Dad.

So I did. The Internet is loaded with information. Hours and hours and many more hours later, I came across one article that mentioned this anomaly. The page mentioned it in one sentence.

OK, now I believed the doctor. She even asked Dad if she could write about him in a medical journal.

Dad had a growth in the elastic lining of his brain, so to speak. In the fluid like material that cushions our brain against the skull, was a sort of tumor. It wasn't dangerous, really and wasn't expected to change shape, grow in size or anything like that. I didn't understand a lot of what was told to me.

I knew this: Dad wasn't going to die from cancer. He would live normally--quite normally in fact--and his only health risk was that his changes of a stroke were ten times that of a healthy person.

Basically that meant, change of diet, less stress and don't do any of that lifting that requires heavy grunting until that vein in your forehead pops.

So yeah, we felt good about it. When you consider all the other possibilities, this was a good thing. And it was even better that Dad had quit smoking.

He has not had a cigarette since January 8th, 2007. After attempting to quit multiple times, he's finally kicked it. It doesn't bother him, he doesn't crave it. He can sit around us while we smoke and it doesn't bother him at all.

Mom is still smoking, outside of course. All in good time, I suppose. All in good time.

Dad has dropped the gum, but is now hooked on the nicotine lozenge. We laugh about it, though. At least you're not smoking! we say. He's trying to get off the lozenge. A friend of Mom's has been hooked on the gum for three years or better!

We don't hassle them. It's still nicotine, a drug--sure. But it's not chemicals, tar and carcinogens being inhaled into the lungs on an hourly basis.

And that's a damn fine start.