I am very happy for you! I try to encourage everyone to quit smoking. I am in favor of them being outlawed.
Anyone who needs encouragement to quit, please read this story.
I watched my dad suffer for six long years, and finally lose his life to emphazema and COPD at age 49...about a month before his 50th birthday.
We all thought he was in fine health until one day he was out mowing our pasture and he passed out and fell from the tractor. He was in the hospital a week or so, and the doctors determined that if he didn't quit smoking immediately he would only have a few month to live. He never picked up another cigarette.
Even after quitting cold turkey, he continued to get weaker. The crazy thing is, there were never any signs or symptoms previous to the incident on the tractor. He thought he was one of the lucky ones, that smoking would not effect him. Quitting did prolong his life for six years. They were not particularly pleasant for him though. He had always been an outdoorsmen, one of those real men who could do anything, fix anything, build anything...and then suddenly he could barely walk from the kitchen table to the living room, he could no longer stand in the shower, he couldn't even speak a full sentence without gasping for air. He was constantly on oxygen had to go to the hospital about every two months or so to get up to a liter of fluid drained from his lungs. Not only did our family of 5 at home lose his income (social security did not grant him benefits for several years) my moms income was cut in half as his medications alone per month added up to over $600 (after insurance).
Looking back over the years, it makes me mad to see what a selfish stupid habit it was. He would get so mad when he ran out of cigarettes. I can remember times when I didnt have lunch money, but dad had cigarrettes. It's hard to believe that a man so strong and so capable let such a pathetic addiction rule his life. And then they took his life
He got to come to my graduation and see me off to college in August of 2007, but he passed away that october. He didnt get to see my 14 yr old sister make varsity cheerleader as a freshman, he didnt get to see my six year old sister graduate from kindergarten. He has 5 daughters who he will never get to see walk down the aisle. There are so many things he will miss out on, and so many thing we need our daddy for, and we can't have him. And my poor mom, she's so strong. She worked so hard to take care of him all those years. He was the love of her life, and now at 37 years old, she is a widow tyring to raise 2 young girls alone.
If you are a smoker, you need to quit now before its too late. Who cares if you "suffer" through cravings and jitters or put on 15 lbs? Smokers always say "its too hard to quit," "you don't smoke, you don't understand." They have no idea what suffering is, they have no idea what hard is. Believe me, I understand. You CAN put them down and never pick them back up. And you need to, because sooner or later, they will kill you.