Sunday, September 21, 2008

PART THREE More Shock Treatment (Doesn't Make You Quit)

As I've said before, shock treatment won't make me stop smoking. If it worked, then every junkie in the world would look at the guy next to him and say, "Is that what I look like? Man, I gotta quit this drug! That's it, I'm done!"

As a smoker, I've had a lot of issues hit close to home, so to speak. My immune system is not as strong as that of a non-smoker. Would you smoke your first cigarette if you thought it might give you AIDS?

Extreme? Yes, but in a sense, that's what smoking does to you. It lowers the strength of your immune system, your God-given ability to fight infection. The many bouts I've had with bronchitis, pneumonia, etc have not deterred me from smoking. Even when it happens to others cloe to me, it's not a solution to quitting.

My mother watched her father have a heart attack, right before her eyes. She was twelve years old. He died instantly--a result of smoking heavily for many, many years. This did not deter her from starting smoking. I suppose it could have been worse. I mean, in the 70's cocaine was all the rage. What if Mom had chosen cocaine instead?

The effects, in my opinion, would have been the same except they would have take less time to materialize.

About seven or eight years ago, Mom was diagnosed with emphysema. Shawn & I were married by now and puffing away ourselves. At this time I had been smoking at least five years, more and more each day.

When Mom called and gave me the news, I cried. The doctors told Mom if she didn't quit smoking, she'd have ten years left. I never knew for sure if they meant 10 years of quality life, or just 10 years. Either way, I have had no desire to look up emphysema till now. And I do it not to scare myself, or to realize it is a death sentence, but to affect those out there who may be wanting to try cigarettes for the first time.....

In a nutshell, emphysema affects the breathing. It is a progressive, destructive disease that changes the shape of functions in the lung. It affects the lungs' immunity but is not necessarily a death sentence if treatments are provided and smoking is stopped.

Text book stuff: Emphysema is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. It is a chronic, progressive disease that affects the quality of life at least as much as the length of life

When I was fifteen, maybe close to the time I had starting experimenting with cigarettes, Mom was in the hospital for two weeks with pneumonia. I was scared. When I was very young, I loved The Muppets and was saddened when I heard Jim Henson had died from pneumonia.

That was the gist of my knowledge of pneumonia--even though I'd had it myself as a child when I was 6 years old--was that people could die from it.

I can very plainly, to this day remember the horrible sound Mom made when she coughed. Like an engine being egged on to start, but the engine is filled with trash. A nurse would hold a little cup under Mom's mouth as she coughed, prodding her to cough up something, anything. Eventually a small mass of the greenest glop you'd ever seen would come sputtering out & the nurse would go running off to a lab.

I remember sleeping in a chair with my head on the side of Mom's bed. Sleeping? Well, sort of. Nobody ever really sleeps in a hospital unless heavily sedated! The nurses would offer me sodas--the kinder ones anyway. I remember one nurse who looked exactly like Kathy Bates. Mom and me had recently seen that movie where Kathy Bates kidnaps the author and breaks his legs. Every time the Kathy Bates nurse left the room, Mom would hiss through her chapped lips, "Kathy Bates!!" and we'd laugh. Well, I'd laugh. Mom would cough and wheeze.

The Kathy Bates nurse was something else. She was, I dunno, angry at the world, I guess. She was mean and obviously couldn't express one ounce of compassion to anyone. We were just hoping she wouldn't smash a hammer across a patient's legs!

Mom did get better and went right back to smoking. Not that she wanted to. That is how powerful the drug is.

After all this, I still smoked. How could I have been such a blatant fool?

1 comment:

whatagem said...

2011 update: Mom quit smoking Christmas Day 2009. I quit the following February, we both used the electronic cigarette, 6 volt version. The Chuck, to be specific.
February 2011: I quit the e-cig & switched to nicotine gum.