I wasn't a smoker during that time, before Or after. But I have been a smoker off and on since 1967. I never smoked more than a pack a day when i've smoked habitually, back in the Marlboro/Camel days.
Like half of the world I started smoking American Spirit cigarettes when they came out and it was really great because I had no desire to smoke more than a few cigarettes a day because they were not filled with additives.
There really is a radical difference between that brand of cigarettes and the popular ones. Most people I've known who smoke them smoke a lot less than they ever smoked before. But they're more expensive so that makes up for the cigarette company's profits.
However, even only smoking one or two a day, habitually or otherwise, is a very bad idea. The lungs are a fragile organ and the tar in cigarettes prohibits their ability to perform effectively.
That brings me to my current status. I started stress-smoking in February because of trouble with my son, then I continued in March like crazy because of covid-19. I never smoked more than one or two cigarettes a day. It was just a way to calm myself down.
Then, on March 19th, one of my dearest friends died. It was unexpected. He was younger than me by five years. While his sister and I and my sister and friends who knew him were putting things together for an online Memorial, and grieving together, my friend's sister's husband John died, just days after George died.
As this devastating stuff was happening I came down with what seemed like like a simple head cold. It turned into a sinus infection and that turned into an upper respiratory infection in my lungs. I was still smoking this tiny little bit. I was stressed out even more by the pandemic and the deaths of my friends and the behavior of my son and a deep depression. I really haven't been posting much because I have been too depressed.
The involvement of my lungs has become very serious. I cannot sleep through the night because I can't breathe. I wake up wheezing, unable to get a deep breath and have a barking hacking cough that goes on for a few minutes and then I can barely get back to sleep. I have seen my doctor 5 times.
She prescribed me an inhaler about 10 days ago along with recommending Mucinex. I was also taking Sudafed and drinking a gallon of water a day to thin the mucus. However the inhaler was defective. I just thought it was me, unable to benefit from the squirt of Albuterol. But after about seven days it completely stopped dispensing medication, just broke.
So as sick as I was I had to go to the pharmacy to get an inhaler that worked and that experience was incredibly obnoxious and I've been sleeping so badly and feeling so bad that I could barely stand in line without falling over.
I have not been running a fever so there have been no indications of covid-19. And the way the infection has progressed, even though it's viral, all the other things have seemed like secondary infections. However I have still managed to smoke one cigarette a Day.
Not to make excuses for myself, but the stress I have been feeling for the last 2 months has been practically killing me. I live alone and I am very isolated. I'm so afraid of covid-19 I will not leave my house except to go to the grocery or Pharmacy. It is the isolation that I feel that drives me to do stupid but comforting things like smoking a cigarette. A pack lasts me for 2 weeks or longer.
So, here I am and I've wasted the last week with a bad inhaler and my doctor put me on antibiotics in case this wasn't viral. But they haven't done any good. So our plan now is to see how I do over the weekend and if I am not improved by Monday, we are going to start testing me for COPD and emphysema.
Me. The hiker of mile-high mountains. The person who loves to work out at the YMCA. The old hippie who's feels like she's still 30 most of the time. The poster child for bariatric surgery, having maintained my weight for 13 years. Possibly emphysema. That would be the last thing anyone would ever think would happen to me.
And I still have six cigarettes in my box in the living room. And I will most likely smoke them over the next week.
So, if you are wondering about whether or not you should quit smoking before surgery or fearful you will start smoking after surgery, consider me a cautionary tale. I do everything right except for the cigarettes. And even smoking one cigarette a day is too much. The YMCA is closed indefinitely until the pandemic is over and I am out of shape, although I have lost 6 lbs in the last week from being uninterested in food.
I am betting on myself here, that I won't turn up with emphysema. I did have a chest x-ray in January and it was normal. But it is really scary to imagine that this could happen to me.
I know a lot of people who smoke pot all day long, like other people would smoke cigarettes, and they are always hacking away and stinky and not very healthy. I don't smoke pot and I don't eat bad food and I pride myself on my health. But there's just this one thing. It's almost a rebellion. I don't want to be told that I can't do something that I have done in great moderation, occasionally, even quitting for years at a time, when there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with me--until now.
Fact is that cigarettes are bad for you. You can look at them on a spectrum from being just a slightly nasty habit to being a deadly nail in your coffin. And most people smoke so much, and they cannot control the number of cigarettes they smoked, so they end up aging faster and dying sooner.
Even though I can control the number of cigarettes I smoke, and even though smoking one cigarette a day doesn't seem to have any effect on my health, I have a vivid imagination and I can see the smoke coursing through the fragile little branches in my lungs swirling around and painting them with sticky black tar. I don't think about that kind of stuff because I want to appreciate the relaxation they bring me. But not thinking about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It does.
Take your own inventory and be honest with yourself. What are you smoking? How much are you smoking? Do you also smoke pot? Do you live in a city where you are already taking in enough air pollution to equal smoking two cigarettes a day? Do you do any sort of exercise to help keep your breathing strong? Are you nice to your lungs usually? Do cigarettes make you feel sick? Do you feel compelled to smoke? Are you an addict? Do you want to get better? Is trying to lose an enormous amount of weight part of your plan to make your life better? If so, why are you smoking? Do you have other bad habits? Do they affect your health? When you get a cold is it worse than the colds other people get? Has anyone in your family had lung cancer or any pulmonary disease? If so, did they smoke? Did it kill them?
I think you can take it from there.
This is a support group and our only desire is to support you and have you support us. Therefore, telling the truth is essential. And even though I still think I do less damage to my lungs with cigarettes than most people do, I do damage to my lungs with cigarettes, so why am I putting it on some kind of continuum, as if a little bit was okay? As much as I hate the preachy American Lung Association people and the pious ex-smokers who love to throw it in your face, science has proven that the tar in cigarettes is bad for you. The nicotine addicts you, but it's the tar that sticks to those lacy tissues in your delicate little lungs and you cannot wash it out or cough it out or get it out or change it in any way except by not smoking.
And even if you are only a one pack a day smoker, it will take a year for your lungs to return to being pink from being brown or black like they are right now. Imagining your lungs honestly and meditating on the image of your lungs is a very good devotional to practice everyday. Go online and get some images of diseased lungs, the kind they hang up in the doctor's office. It's for real, man.
If you think your body is a temple or if you want your body to be completely yours, and if you want to be able to say yes to everything because you are healthy, you just can't do that to your lungs. You are getting weight loss surgery so that you will have less disease and be able to use your body the way it's supposed to be used. Why bother if you're just going to smoke afterward?
Smoking or not smoking is a decision you have to make for yourself. It is an intimate decision between you and your body and your heart and soul and for some people, between you and your God. You have to face it. You can't turn away. So look at yourself in the mirror and have the conversation.
Here is the greatest irony of everything I've talked about. The one or two cigarettes i've smoked a day have not brought my dead friends back, have not improved my relationship with my son, and have not made me feel better. And possibly they have made my infections worse. Probably. Such a large part of my life is falling apart right now. What if I decide to show myself some love instead of hurting myself even more?
That is not a rhetorical question.
