Stop and Do Not Look Back

I have been a non-smoker now for years, lost track of exact time. I am 45. I smoked since a teenager, about 16. So one day you realise you have been smoking for 20 years! Yikes!!

I had pneumonia in my 20's, I remember going to the doc with breathing difficulties also in my 20's (couldn't seem to get a full breath), but didn't attribute either of these events to my smoking habit. Neither did the doctors really.

I never considered myself to be a heavy smoker...around 5 a day, sometimes just 1 at night after the gym (bizarre I know)......other times I would binge smoke at the club/pub/casino. But don't be fooled you pack-a-day smokers. It's all relative, I am a small person, it was probably all my lungs could take. I was still trapped.

I quit for both pregnancies, which I believe is quite common. I didn't really pick it back up fully in between, but I did smoke. Then when my youngest was about 18 months old my ex and I separated. Stress, anger, depression, yadda, yadda, yadda, meant I smoked like a crazy person. In 2007, I had pain in my lower right side for months. Then, I got really sick and ended up in hospital with pneumonia again. My babies were almost 5 and 2 1/2. I had to go back to see a lung specialist after a series of frightening tests (for eg. inside a chamber blowing into tubes). I felt pathetic that I had come to this. I remember having a cigarette though the day I was going back to see the specialist. Still it hadn't dawned on me that stopping the cigarettes was the single most important thing I could do for my health (which is what the doctor in the hospital told me). The specialist casually told me "there is emphysema there". I didn't realise the full impact of this. I asked him what that meant and he told me, again very casually, that if I continued smoking I probably wouldn't be able to walk around the shopping centre in a few years time. He didn't go into details about emphysema, but I researched it myself, and it petrified me. I asked the specialist if he had ever smoked (probably trying to get some validation to continue smoking). He told me he wouldn't touch it. He told me that people think "who cares, another nail in the coffin, I don't care if I die a bit younger as long as I get to enjoy my smoking", but then he said the most powerful thing "the trouble is you don't die.......you suffer....you can't breath, but you are still alive". I was haunted but still had small bouts where I smoked after this. For example, in 2008/9 when my Dad was diagnosed with a rare disease and died (always an excuse). I remember there was an emphysema patient (a woman about my age now who looked much older) in a bed beside my Dad in one of the many hospitals my poor old Dad was in and out of. The universe has truly been trying to tell me something. One of my Uncles (Mum's brother) died with emphysema the same year my Dad died. Before this Uncle died he had to have an oxygen tank with him. He had smoked for many years, but quit in his 60's. The emphysema still got him though when he was nearly 80. Another of my Mum's brothers had died with emphysema many years before (early 1990) in his 50's. Another had throat cancer, but survived like this for many years until he died in his 80's. My first boss (I was 13, she was about 40), a beautiful woman, lived with emphysema for many years and died too early. Her sons told me she still had all her little soldiers (cigarettes) burning in separate rooms of the house at the same time right up until her death.

I got the book "The Easy Way To quit Smoking" in in 2009 or 2010 which really resonated with me. It is all so logical and just common sense really. I really had just had enough with this constant battle. This on again, off again, casual smoker when the going got tough, obviously still suffering addiction. The journey has been a long one, but I know now I would NEVER touch another cigarette again. I am, in fact, one of those "worst" reformed smokers you'll ever meet. I loathe the industry and cannot believe these disgusting death sticks are legal. It truly is ridiculous if you sit and think about it for long enough. To think, I was targeted as a naive teenager to be sentenced to death because of the cigarette. It is truly a bizarre thing to take smoke into your beautiful, miraculous lungs when they were designed to breathe oxygen to sustain life.

I had another health scare just last year. I couldn't get a full breath and my extremities were tingling. I  had tests done to find out what was going on. I had to have a CT scan and I seriously believed this was it. I though my smoking had finally caught up with me and that even though I no longer smoked the emhysema had gotten worse. I was crying like a child whilst lying there about to have the scan. The nurse asked me if I was scared. You bet I was scared.

My scan was clear. Turns out I was anaemic. I am feeling fit and fabulous now. Still pretty sure my lungs are still healing as my breathing is not perfect. But I run (even if for short intervals interspersed with walking). I am determined that every cell in my amazing body will regenerate itself, and that if I respect my body the healing will be whole.

I just hope that anybody struggling with this addiction can find some hope or strength from my story. You will struggle, possibly for a long time, but NEVER give up. Turn this around and regenerate your beautiful lungs so that they can breathe freely as they were meant to do. Become someone who spreads the word on the EVIL of this ridiculous addiction. We all know now......no qualms......smoking will kill you if you keep doing it. If you stop, you will heal. You have to give yourself that chance. 

I wish you well on your journey. I hope you find strength. I hope you never feel fear.

D

xxx