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Share your quitting journey

What I will be doing on my 3 year Anniversary

kellie3
Member
0 11 5

I came here a few days after I quit smoking.  On June 4th, 2009 @ 3:30 in the afternoon I quit smoking cold turkey.  My daughter had used this site before and had great sucess for 6 months before she was foolish and began smoking again.  She introduced me to a few people here who had helped her, I set up my page and began to blog and make friends.  Some of those friends I will call my forever friends.  

Life sometimes can catch you off guard, and it can even be ironic.

The day I quit smoking I was at the doctor with another chest cold, get more codiene cough syurp.  This time I had a different Dr. that was standing in for my regular doc.  She ordered chest x-rays, and within 35 minutes I was alone hearing I had lung disease and I needed to see a Pulmonologist quickly.

I through the cigarettes away on my way home and never smoked again.  I was thinking this would definately help my lung disease.  Quitting smoking, right?  It should help tremendously!  Well, yes it does help with progression, but it doesn't stop it.  Lung disease (in my case) emphysema is not curable.  The doctors can give you medicine to ease the side effects, quitting smoking and exercising can slow it down... but it always is moving forward.

I went through so much over the last 3 years.  

Remember I talked about irony?  Well, I quit smoking June 4th 2009, and Monday June 4th, 2012  I will be seeing a team of doctors who will evaluate me for a Lung Volume Reduction Surgery.  If I do not qualify for this then I will be sent on to another University to be evaluated for a double lung transplant.  Can you believe it??  Three years!!  All my doctors (now there is a considerable group of them) agree that had I not quit smoking I would have been dead long ago.

I am now to the point where I could die of a common cold.  If I were to catch a virus I could not come back from it.  I need to have a surgery to remove a 4 pound fibroid tumor on my uterus... I am actually seeing an OBGYN while at this University to schedule surgery for me.  My home town hospital (or those around me) will not consider surgery on me in case my lungs were to become a problem they want an entire staff on call to work on me.  I am high risk.

If you are thinking you can beat cigarettes you are fooling yourself.  Sure, you will see an old person once in a while smoking and seemingly living a healthy life.  It's the roll of the dice.  Are you willing to bet on your life?  Not only yourself but those around you.  2nd hand smoke they are finding out is just as bad as smoking each cigarette yourself.  Copd is the 4th most leading cause of death in the U.S. this year.  Next year it is supposed to move ahead of breast and prostrate cancer to become the 3rd leading killer.  

Use this site.  Use the knowledge of the elders here.  They are not paid to be here, they do it to pay it forward and try and save lives.  I bow to them, bless their hearts for being so giving.  

I owe my life to this site and it's members... my friends.

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