I was 57 years old and smoking like a chimney in September 2003. I was also having medical problems and upon my doctor’s diagnosis, I knew I had to quit smoking. I was scheduled and admitted to the hospital in October 2003.
I had a total hysterectomy and was recuperating, when a nurse found me upset in my room and she told me to try to calm down, and take a deep breath… I could not take a deep breath! In fact, I had to be put on oxygen immediately! I was terrified.
A medical specialist was brought in, and that is when I learned I had COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). My x-rays confirmed it, and the direct cause was smoking [since I was 15 years old]. I had double pneumonia as an infant, so my lungs were fragile, even when I was very young…
I had to stay an extra week and they pumped steroids and antibiotics in my arm so I could breathe on my own, again. My nose got so sore with those oxygen cannulas in both nostrils.
Hindsight is always 20/20. I should have never started smoking. However, peer pressure was awful when I was 15 years old. A few of my classmates dared me to light up and smoke one… I remember that first taste and how I coughed from the smoke. It was awful! But I wanted to “belong”, so I smoked until the addiction took hold of me!
Back to the hospital room… I was terrified. I quit. I stayed that way for six whole months. My husband, Ed quit with me. We were doing great and then one day I said to him, “My life feels empty. Do you think we’ve got this quitting thing under control? Do you think we can have just a few a day? Before I could say another word, he was off in the car to buy some cigarettes…
We both lit up when he returned, and I felt like my throat and lungs were on fire! I smashed it out and coughed! “I will never do that again!” But an addict’s lies are just that! Before long I was smoking over a pack a day again…
The truth is that I had no idea how terrible the “addiction” to the drug Nicotine was. I smoked for another decade or two and each day I would tell myself that I would quit “tomorrow”. Don’t be as naïve’ as I was about this slowly killing addiction! Quit now! I would not be using two inhalers if I would have kept my quit way back then…
