It is with heartfelt love and appreciation of your constant loyalty and support that I announce my One Year anniversary as a non-smoker!! I would not/could not have embarked on this much dreaded, journey without you.
It is with much pride and pleasure that I surrender my milestone speech. This is my story in part, which I hope will serve as a testimonial to the necessity and absolute attainability of ridding yourself of nicotine addiction.
Before I start my story, let me tell you of a recent development which gives me further cause to be glad I’ve quit smoking. A couple of weeks ago I went to the doctor as I was having unusual heart palpitations. He made an EKG and sent me to a cardiologist. Reading it as abnormal she said it suggested that I’d had a heart attack and ordered a stress test, echocardiogram and put a heart monitor on me for 24 hours. Needless to say all this unnerved me quite a bit.
After 2 weeks of worry, the tests were done and the results came back as AOK! I was told I have a small amount of aortic stenosis (hardening of the artery), but it seems there are no adverse effects at the present. I still have a follow up visit with the doctor to go, but I am somewhat relieved with this news. Thank God!
My Story
I am no stranger to adversity. I’ve lived a long time, ran across many bumps in the road, weathered many situations and survived many pitfalls. I cursed the bumps, whimpered and whined at the situations and survived the pitfalls only with the helping hand of my better half and family. But I’m happy to say that this past year I fought and won one of the most trying battles of my entire life.We who have fought the battle with nicotine addiction feel a kindred spirit with one another. We can honestly say “I understand” and we often feel we’ve ‘walked in another’s shoes’. Yet each of us have a different story surrounding our addiction and the many warning signals we chose to ignore.
I was born when Mom was almost 40 and Dad was 54. My only brother was 20 at the time. My Dad and brother were both smokers long before I was a twinkle in my Dad’s eye. I grew up around many smokers; cousins, uncles and family friends. In those days it was just a trend of the times, one which inevitably would take a toll on people’s lives.
My Dad lived to the age of 88, but the last 5 years of his life were not quality years. He had heart failure and the doctors put in one of the first pacemakers ever made. He wore a battery pack just under the skin in his abdomen with wires running up to his heart. Every time the batteries gave out it was a rush to the hospital. It was a surgical procedure to change them. His pulse would go down as low as 7-8 beats per minute and he would black out. Often he had to be pounded in the chest with a fist to shock the heart into beating again.
Five years this went on until one day they had to open his chest and massage his heart but it was in vain and mercifully so. By that date in time it was known that heart disease was a smoking-related illness. I kept on smoking.
My brother passed away in 1994 from lymphoma, a form of cancer. One day toward the end he looked at me with a sad, frightened, pleading look and asked me to quit smoking. That look haunted me for a long time. But I did not quit.
A dear cousin had breast cancer which later spread to various parts of her body. A tumor on her spine rendered her immobile towards the end. She had been a smoker. Her husband died a few years later of lung cancer.
Another dear cousin is in a nursing home after having one leg amputated from the knee down. He has a history of heart disease and bad circulation. Oh the many times we played cards in a cloud of smoke!! He was forced to quit after being a heavy, long time smoker. The first few times I visited him he would ask if I had any cigarettes on me and I lied for his sake. Now I can truthfully and thankfully tell him I don’t smoke anymore.
I don’t remember too many kids smoking when I was growing up. Oh, I know they tried it out but most didn’t like it or got sick, especially from cigars. That would usually be the end of that for awhile. As portrayed in a few old movies, sometimes a dad would even give a kid a cigar or chew of tobacco in hopes it would teach them a lesson and they would never take up the habit.
My brother used to roll his own cigarettes. He had a little rolling machine that would be a collectible if it were still around. I got a kick out of it when he let me do it. Oh….the tangled webs we weave!
Mary's Story, Page Two
