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Share your quitting journey

I have no intention of caving

constanceclum
Member
5 14 140

Today I have 50 days of freedom from the hidious cancer sticks. I am proud of myself because I have never made it this far! I blogged yesterday about how much stress I've been under for the past 4 months, and I'm going to repeat whe whining for the last time because there's an "in conclusion" now.

I had been on latuda for e yrs. given to me as samples from the county mental health clinic that I was going to. This medication is for bipolar depression and costs $1200.00/mo. There is no way I could even affort the co-pay. They had been telling me for several months prior that they weren't getting as many samples and in May they told me they didn't have any. This is a dangerous medicine to stop taking. You have to wean off it over months and under medical supervision. I weaned myself off it as best I could with the ones I had left-over about 3 weeks. I went through the worst depression and anxiety I had ever experienced, and it lasted for several weeks. At the end of May, my brilliant son who was going to grad. school for Data Science, went with his family to Myrtle Bch. where he decided to do a bunch of meth and ended up in jail. He lost everything. He add a history of alcohol and prescription med abuse but had never done illegal street drugs. On top of my depression I was already going through, watching him go through this totally broke my heart! He's out of jail now and in treatment, and will have to start his life completely over starting with nothing.. In July I had my 6 mo. CT scan which showed the nodule in my lungs had grown. This is highly incitive of malignancy, and I already spend a God awful amoung to money on medical expenses every month so I had no idea how I would even begin to afforddf cancer care even with insurance, and because of other health problems, I'm not a good candidate for either lung surgery or chemo. I had also got pneumonia in May which really had made my breathing a lot worse so I started thinking about quitting smokin and took the plunge on July 29. I had my Pet scan at the end of Aug. and found out last week that the nodule is benign so, finally, some good news. At the same time, my husband got really sick with pneumonia, copd flare up and possibly sleep apnea. Today, he called and told me we are having transmission problems. in our only car. We don't know the outcome yet.

So I'm depressed and have periods of anxiety. I don't know, for the life of me, why we are being so bombarded. I started wondering if maybe I am being severely tested by Satan to cave and start smoking again, because I have had so a hard time in NML. Well, I'm here to say, I will not give in. My story will be that, no matter what you go through, what kind of depression or anxiety or crap that life throws at you, YOU DON"T HAVE TO SMOKE OVER IT!!!

I hope you all have a blessed day!

Connie

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About the Author
I'm 59 with severe COPD. I've decided I really want to live and I won't if I smoke. I have 4 grown boys, a grandson and granddaughter due on 9/10. Lots of reasons to live.