I am only 49 years old. That is what I said to myself when I sat in the emergency room. This is suppose to happen to people in their sixties or older. Forty nine! Some how, I didn't expect it to happen this way, although I knew it wouldn't be good no matter what happened and I knew it would happen some day.
Not one person had told me that cigarettes were bad for you. My parents were relieved that I wasn't smoking dope. I didn't even want to smoke when I started, but if I were to keep my best friend though, that would have to be the thing for me to do. I have a lot of time to think about things now. I should be very happy., I should be very relieved beacause I don't have lung cancer, yet. With God's blessing maybe I never will. There is one problem I do have. I can't breathe. I would be willing to bet that outside of the medical community, 90% of the population doesn't know what happened to me. The name of the diagnosis the doctor gave me that day in the ER was spontaneous pneumothorax. I said okay, so in laymans terms? A collapsed lung. Now I wonder what caused this collapsed lung. Do you think smoking for 35 years had anything to do with it? I said to myself , of course it is. That and some other things like chemicals that I worked with long ago. Together the mixture was about to change my life.
Thirty five years is a long time to smoke and inhale poison. I tried to quit but I am too weak, I kept telling myself. I didn't start out smoking a lot. I was still in high school, so you couldn't smoke during classes. I smoked maybe 7 a day. That grew to three packs a day, and eventually, I finally started going the other direction and ended up smoking around a pack a day, unless of course I was nervous, had coffee, had a few beers. I'm sure you know all the excuses. I wish I would have kept track of all those cigs I smoked. How much damage my lungs were taking. In the end, I figured one pack a day for one year, not counting extra days in that year and the extra packs when I was extra stupid. I figured I smoked around 7,200 cigs a year! Can you imagine that sight? Smokers, put all your cigs in a container and keep watching it grow. of course you could quit and instead of butts growing you could watch the green bucks grow. How much would that be? At just one carton a week, at the price of the cigs I bought would have cost me $2,400 a year. Since this is what I would be paying, some of you wouldn't because I had to have the name brand. Alot of people changed to generics or lower priced cigs, and even are buying illegally over the internet. I hope you read this whole thing because this is not just another lecture about the effects of smoking. Please read the next page. |
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