Smoking Cessation Community

I am on my preparation week for my start date of September 25th to slap on the patch and QUIT! I recently tried Chantix again and this time it made me REALLY ill with daily nausea and headaches, so I am going to try nicotine patches. I have been smoking for 23 years.

Anyway, I LOVE smoking, I enjoy it, I am a "food" smoker; a "phone" smoker, a "car" smoker, a "social" smoker, but most of all I am a "STRESS" smoker. I know it is stinky, smelly, causes health problems...blah, blah, blah....but I didn't care. I have two kids and I told them "if you ever smoke, I will kick your butt!" What a hypocrite I am, huh!?!? Then, August 6th came and changed everything.

My mother, age 62, was in a minor fender-bender which brought on symptoms of a mild heart attack. I was scared out of my mind, she of course played it down, even herself signing forms at the emergency area wherein they allowed her to go outside and smoke. None of us really ever thought that smoking was THAT dangerous. On 8/6 she was admitted for observation and tests, on 8/7 they confirmed the heart attack and moved her to a better hospital which was actually, her PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT. On that day she told me that she would be undergoing a heart cath on the 9th and she'd know more. That evening brought the call that crushed my world, a nurse on the phone said, "you need to get down here as quick as you can"...I collapsed to my knees in tears. They were afraid that by the looks of the heart cath she did NOT have more than 3-6 months to live without SEVERE intervention. We drove to be by her side and what usually takes us 10 hours took us 8 hours. Getting to my mother before she came out of open heart surgery was the most important thing in my life at that very moment.

My mom raised 2 kids, on her own, she was my mom and my dad. She was SUPERMOM, completely invincible and untouchable; or so we thought. The only thing keeping my mother's heart beating was a vein on the backside of her heart that literally dropped down and re-routed blood to keep her alive. She had (appx) 8 blockages, including both corotid arteries in her neck. She was a "ticking massive heart-attack time-bomb". Speculation led to "she could drop dead at any minute". We were devastated.

Long story short, my mom IS STILL SUPERMOM, just a little calmed down for the recovery period. She is the most important person in my life next to my 2 kids (oh, and the husband..haha). I love her so very much and am using her as my source of motivation to QUIT SMOKING for GOOD!

ANYONE can accomplish ANYTHING they set their mind to, I used to hear this all the time and thought it was a load of BS. Now, I am trying to take it to heart...literally. I do NOT want to be on that cardiac table having my chest cut open and doctors trying to work miracles to save me. I want to quit and I want to live. I will probably have set-backs, minor trip-ups and cravings along the way but I am bound and determined to not only break this addiction for my mom but for myself and to set an example for my kids and to NOT be a hypocrite!

Thanks for reading - any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
PS: Hopefully, I did nothing wrong here...it's my first post!