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February 08, 2007

Quit Smoking

I cannot know what it feels like to try to give up cigarette smoking. I have never smoked. Heck, I don't even drink or use drugs. The most I have had to give up is a 6+ soda a day habit. I draw no connection to how related caffeine habits are to nicotine... because I think cigarettes are far more addictive. So again, I don't know what its like. It's hard enough for me to distract myself from caffeine... I can only magnify that feeling in what I think it must be for a quitting smoker.

All I know is what it does. I watched my grandmother suffer for years from the effects of her own smoking. She quit ten years prior to her death, but the cancer had already started. There were months where she would have "spells" when she wouldn't come out of the bedroom or let anyone in... just not feeling well. Being a nurse, you would have thought she would have sought out treatment... it didn't happen. I guess the fear of "knowing" the truth was too much as well... I must get my manias honestly.

All cancers are evil to watch. Lung cancer is especially draining. It takes the wind from your sails. That feeling of trying to catch your breath because you smoke... magnify that several times over. The wasting of the body is terrifying. The pain with every ragged breath. The medications barely cleave a way through it. You are left in a fugue state, barely existing. Endless machines and tanks surround you... covered in tubes and lines... all just to push one more breath into you. And it goes on and on... until it ends. It's hideous. When there is nothing that you can do.

This is why I hate cigarettes. Not just hate... it goes deeper than that... I DESPISE them. They are the source... they are the nagging drive... they are bottled thunder just waiting to be opened and shock the hell of the user into opening the next. Yes, the person chooses to smoke... but in the end, the addiction makes it difficult as hell to give up.

I am a silent militant against smoking. I do NOT make smokers miserable. I don't throw a bitch fit over a smoker in a restaurant. I just go somewhere else. I don't whine about someone smoking in my house. I leave the room. I am not that vociferous loud mouth that likes to prattle on about how he knows better. All I know is what I personally experienced from it myself. No, I don't believe this will happen to every smoker. Being the alarmist... It's the only result I see, however unrealistic that may be.

I can't control if someone smokes... but all I can ever see is the end result... over and over. All I can feel is what it feels like to be in the room with someone suffering from it, wasting away, dieing. The worry never goes away... you can hear the crud in someone's lungs in a conversation... the throat constriction... the staining of the skin around the fingers... the smell of smoke and nicotine in the hair and clothes. You can see the weakness permeating the body... how steps are an issue, making the body feel like lead... the wheezing from the exertion of walking one step too far.

I can't speak on how hard it is to quit smoking. I don't know and hopefully I never will. All I know is I hope and pray Webkittyn makes it through the raging needs and mind numbing temptations to fight her way through it. I know it won't be easy. I don't know what it feels like. All I know is, she doesn't deserve to live with it. No one does.

Posted by Ravennacht at February 8, 2007 09:50 AM Posted to Health