I've hated see people smoke since I was a kid. Both of my parents smoked until I was in my mid-20's, and it took a massive heart attack for my dad to decide he wanted to live more than he wanted to smoke. I remember rolling down the window in the back seat of our car when I was a little girl, even in the winter, to just be able to breathe while my parents puffed away in the front, telling me I was going to "catch my death of cold" if I didn't get my nose out of the crack in the window. Yeah, right...
I grew up with a dad who was a pack-a-day smoker . . . unfiltered Camels. He smoked from the age of 10 to 72 and when he decided to quit, he quit cold turkey and never touched another cigarette until he died at 87. Damnedest thing I ever saw. He died of emphysema, of course, but he made the distance anyway.
the thing i always like about the life expectancy calculators is that they actually extend your life if you drink. god loves us so much he makes something that seems obviously terrible into a net gain for our health.
My dad has emphysema, too. It's well under control these days with an inhaler, though it almost killed him in the summer of '05, right after my younger daughter was born. I was afraid she'd never get to know her granddad. He rallied, lost 70 pounds, and feels great these days @ 69. He hasn't touched a cigarette since his heart attack in February of '94. He decided he had a lot to live for. He also quit cold turkey and said a day didn't go by for over a year that he didn't have the impulse to smoke. The turning point was on a vacation in Pennsylvania when he and my mom had to eat in a restaurant without a smoking section. They said they couldn't get over how stinky and smothering the smoke was--he swears he's never even had the impulse to smoke since then.
Emphysema is slow and you actually rarely die of emphysema itself. It just makes one susceptible to pneumonia. Pneumonia is what actually kills them. The puffer probably extended my dads life by ten years.
When emphysema got to him in '05, it was all from a reaction he had to a heart medication. He was allergic, and it kicked the emphysema into high gear. When he went to the doctor, his oxygen level was less than 20%.
Pfizer--new drug doubles survival rate of lung cancer patients. TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A much-anticipated drug for advanced lung cancer from Pfizer Inc. appears to double survival over standard drugs against tumors with a certain genetic mutation, according to research presented Sunday. The drug, called crizotinib, would be the first targeted treatment for the roughly 50,000 people who get this cancer each year worldwide. It might eventually produce annual revenue for Pfizer exceeding $2 billion. The first overall survival data for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with the drug, called crizotinib, showed 74 percent were still alive after a year and 54 percent after two years, researchers announced at a huge cancer specialists conference. The Associated Press: Study: Pfizer lung cancer pill
My wife is one of 8 and all her siblings smoke. She lost a sister at age 37 from lung cancer, her husband is still kicking at age 50 but has had coronary artery stenting twice, their son died at age 30 from alcohol. Nother sister has already had an MI at 50 and her husband occluded his aorta at age 40, and now has several bypass grafts. The others (all younger than us) look twice our age.
I'm more of a "follower" personality but was lucky I didn't start smoking when friends in high school would have "just a few cigs" while going out. Knowing how addictive they can be and the long term effects helped. Now most of my friends smoke or have kicked the habit but still have the urge. I don't think the long term effects would be that bad if smokers limited themselves to a couple of cigs/day. Of course, that's not possible with most smokers. I do enjoy an occasional cigar or other from time to time.
