It's a good day to be a quitter

My original plan this morning was to write about gifted stuff, but then I realized that today --Nov. 15-- is The Great American Smokeout day. I'm happy to say I have been a quitter for going on a year and 7 months now! My husband, however, has not quit. I try not to nag, although I'm not above guilting him on occasion. I know I can't make him do anything, and I know from experience that, well..quitting is hard.

I started smoking when I was 15. I didn't smoke a lot back then because I rarely had any $$ in my pocket to buy cigarettes, but when I was in my 20s and had a job, I started regularly smoking. Months turned into years and before I knew it, 30+ years had passed, and there I was, still puffing away. I had tried to quit numerous times. I'd even gone for as long as a month or two without smoking, but always came back to it using the tired excuse that I was stressed out and needed a smoke to calm down. 

But then something terrible happened. Last year I took the train down to Modesto (California) to visit my mom. Couple of days later I noticed that my calf was hurting, but I attributed it to the long train ride, sitting wrong or something. Then a couple more days later my upper back started hurting really bad—and I’m talking excruciatingly bad. I thought it was my back, not my lungs. It hurt to breathe, so I spent two nights sleeping in a chair (barely sleeping) and popping Ibuprofen like crazy. I felt a little better so got back on the train to go home. I arrived in Sacramento to change trains and as I was walking toward the station, all at once, I could barely catch my breath. It was disturbing, but it went away and so I just brushed it aside. The panic came later that night when I got up to visit the restroom and I coughed up blood. This totally freaked me out, to say the least. I thought, OK that’s it, I’m doomed for sure. In every movie where someone coughs up blood, you just know they're a goner, right? (Fantine in Les Miserables, check; Satine in Moulin Rouge..). Well, there was nothing I could do while I was on the train, but when I arrived back in Eugene, I made an appointment with my doctor. She took x-rays of my lungs and saw some fluid so sent me over the the ER. They did a CT scan and it turns out I had a PE (a pulmonary embolism), but not just one clot, multiple clots, plus I had an infarction in one lung, which means a part of it actually died.

I was promptly admitted to the hospital and they immediately put me on blood-thinning medication. Evidently, I had several clots in my legs as well. After a day or two they sent me home with instructions to give myself an injection in the stomach for the next five days and watch my respiration. I was exhausted. You don’t get much rest in the hospital what with the poking and pricking and scanning and checking they do on a continuous basis, but besides that, it took me months and months and months to fully recover and regain my strength. I also had no medical insurance at the time because I had recently been laid off from my job, but that's another story.

Why did this happen, you ask? Well, a bunch of things converged at once—two long train rides, taking hormone medication, and smoking. 

So I quit. Right then. Cold turkey. When you’re gasping for breath, the last thing you want is a cigarette, and at that point I was just completely done with it. The almost dying part was scary, but if there was a silver lining it was that it presented an opportunity for me to kick a habit that had consumed my life for more than three decades. Not only do I feel better, but probably the best part, in my opinion, is that I'm no longer a slave to it—to that craving to have a smoke after every meal, after sex, to light up when I'm driving, or when I travel, wondering if I'll be able to smoke, etc. It’s nice that I no longer even give it a thought.

Thankfully, I have not become one of those annoying ex-smoker types. You know them—they pass by a group of smokers frantically waving the second-hand smoke away and giving them the stink eye, or they feel compelled to lecture smokers about the evil/dangers of smoking. Smokers know it's bad for them, but let's face it, they enjoy it. Smoking tames the inner beast; it soothes the stress; calms the nerves. Hell, it's bad for us, but we wouldn't do it if it didn't make us feel good and calm and relaxed, right? 

Still, knowing the health benefits of quitting can be motivating. To see what those benefits are, click this link to the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout page: 

Quitting Smoking Benefits

Or for general information, call 1.800.227.2345

BLOOD CLOTS

As I discovered, there also isn't a lot of awareness out there about blood clots. When I arrived at the hospital, the medical staff was stunned that I was even alive. I was told that most blood clots are diagnosed during an autopsy. Not the most comforting news. Yet, blood clots are relatively common in people of all ages. Hormones can play a role as can a long train or airplane ride. For more information, visit the Stop the Clot website:
http://www.stoptheclot.org/