Coping With Smoking

My name is Jay…I will be 31 in June, and I was diagnosed with Bullous Emphysema in mid-March, 2007. I quit smoking the day I heard the diagnosis, and, like Shirley, I have not looked back.

I became a heavy smoker soon after starting smoking at age 15 or so (cannot exactly remember when I began). Like everyone else, I imagine, I presumed the effects of smoking would hit me decades later, and I had plenty of time to kick the habit. For someone who prides himself on his intellectual abilities, I could not have been more stupid, naive, and WRONG.

I will be married to my wonderful fiancee, Sara, in 2008…and I have been lost in the thoughts of all the things I will someday not be here for…and we wish to have children.

As I write this I am in an airport…and as I walked in, I saw many older people who look far worse off physically than I do outside the entrance, smoking…and I kept thinking: how unfair that they, who have probably smoked a lifetime, are not facing this? Unfair or not, I AM facing it…and I must deal with it. And here is the thing for which I feel most guilty: it is not just MY cross to bear…it is everyone’s who loves me…my mother, my stepfather….and Sara…the woman for whom I would walk the earth.

Like Shirley, I am seeing a specialist, a pulmonologist soon…but not soon enough to ease my anxiety…in late June. Fortunately, I live near one of the best respiritory hospitals in the US.

I hope that if you see a smoker, you shake them into reality and tell them to quit. I have always hated preachy ex-smokers…but now I am one…and until the day I leave this earth I WILL be one…a preachy ex-smoker. To not be one is to allow others to commit slow suicide in front of man who will soon feel its effects.

Regards,

Jay
April 30, 2007