A Smoker's Tale

Both of my parents smoked, and as a child growing up I didn’t think much about it. Many grownups smoked – in fact, most grown-ups, who weren’t really old, smoked. My mother smoked Winstons and my dad smoked Kents. My mother drank a lot of Cokes and the combination of a Coke and a cigarette punctuated the completion of each major task. For both my parents, the morning started with a cigarette and ended with a cigarette. From the Lucky Strike Hit Parade, to a barrage of TV tobacco commercials, to magazines with pages filled with cigarette ads, cigarettes were part of our culture and a part of my daily life. I couldn’t smell it; it was around me all the time.

I went through a period when I was an adolescent when I thought smoking was a disgusting habit and I vowed I would never do it. But vows are easily broken when the pressures of teenage life kick in. About the time I was a junior in high school, I noticed that the “cool kids” smoked. And, being a normal teenage girl, I longed to be “cool.” Soon the pressure mounted and the temptation was just too much. One night when my parents were away, I tried it. I coughed and sputtered, but I felt so “cool.” During the remainder of my high school days, I smoked very rarely and even then, I didn’t inhale (really, I didn’t.)

In college, almost all my friends smoked. Cigarettes were sold freely; there was even a machine in the dorm next to the Coke and candy machines. By spring, I was hooked on Newports; I preferred the menthol flavor. I guess about my sophomore year in college, my mother confronted me. She said that she knew I was smoking and I might as well do in front of them. She also told me that she didn’t see anything morally wrong with it; just that it was not too good for you (but it 1966 and the evidence was sketchy and my father said he didn’t believe any of it!). So I kept on smoking and now smoked more and more. I was a grownup and I was still not “cool,” but I was hooked. Cigarettes were only about $.35 a pack, but still a costly habit.

I smoked all the way through college and grad school. I preferred to study at the dorm rather than the library because they made all the smokers sit in one room at the library and it made me cough. My library research was probably weaker than it might have been had I been a non-smoker.

Shortly after I got my masters I married Steve and he also was a smoker. Being a purist in many ways, he smoked unfiltered Pall Malls. They made me gag. Somewhere along the way I switched over the Benson and Hedges 100s. They had a really smooth taste and lasted longer. Besides, we could get our cigarettes really cheap at the BX. I think they were only about $.20 a pack.

When I was pregnant with David in 1971, I confess I didn’t totally stop, but I still had one now and then. There was some “talk” that smoking could be harmful to a developing fetus, but it mostly seemed like talk. Still, I took it seriously enough to cut way back. My mother had smoked all through her pregnancy with me and I turned out OK.

My parents continued to smoke and we did too! The years crept by. When we would visit my parents, a regular ritual was the trip from Vestavia south across the Shelby County, Alabama line for cheap cigarettes. All four of us puffed and puffed away.

Steve, my husband, suddenly decided to quit. I am not sure exactly why he made that decision, but he did it “cold turkey.” He smoked his last cigarette the night that Nixon made his famous “I am not a crook speech.” About a week later my parents came to visit us in California. Steve was not a pleasant person to be around – not surprisingly.

But time passed and in 1976 we moved to Maryland. Steve never smoked again and I continued to smoke and smoke away. Everyday I worked on fixing up our new house and every day I seemed to smoke more and more. By February 1977 I was up to 2 ½ packs a day. I had tried to stop a few times, but with no luck. I tried the low “everything” cigarettes, NOW, but just smoked more of them.

Then on March 23, 1977 everything changed. My mother had a massive heart attack and had to be resuscitated. It was a nightmare that went on for weeks and weeks as she clung to life in a Birmingham hospital ICU. My father and I sat in the waiting room and smoked and smoked—I guess I was smoking three packs or more a day during that period and living on Cokes, cheese crackers and candy from the machine. I gained 15 pounds. Whenever we went into see my mother in ICU, she said she would ask for a cigarette. She could smell it on us! Of course, smoking was not allowed in ICU (although it was in regular rooms).

The one day in April 1977, her conditioned worsened. The doctors told us she had a 1 in 5 chance of making it through the night. But if she could survive the night she had a good chance of surviving long term. I sat in a lounge chair at midnight in the ICU waiting room and I made a silent prayer to God that he would let her live and if he did I vowed that I would never smoke another cigarette until the day she died. She DID make it through the night. She lived another ten years.

I think my deal with God was pretty powerful and the other factor in my quitting was that my world was turned totally upside down. I fashioned a plastic tube and stuffed in with peppermint. I sucked on it A LOT. I knew that smoking was as much a physical addiction as a mental one. There is something about the movement from hand to mouth that is very addictive. For months after I stopped smoking I would smell the tobacco odor whenever I showered – as if it was coming from my every pore stimulated by the hot water. I cleaned my house and removed the yellow scum from everything. My health started to improve and my energy level soared. There was no longer the need to punctuate every accomplishment with a cigarette. With in a year, I found myself employed in a private school where smoking was not allowed.

Gradually, fewer and fewer of the folks I associated with smoked. I found myself disliking the smell of tobacco. In particular, I couldn’t stand to smell the brand my Dad smoked.. For some reason, that brand make my eyes water and gave me a sore throat. Whenever I would visit him, I asked him to smoke another brand – any other brand! In general, however, as the years went by I came to hate the smell of smoke, although every now and then I got the urge to smoke. But I never gave in.

Meanwhile, my mother was doing well after open-heart surgery. She never smoked again, while my father continued. She didn’t like the fact that he still smoked and he tried to smoke more often outside. He still didn’t think there was any real health issue with smoking.

Ten years after my mother’s heart attack, she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. That diagnosis rocked my world! And to compound the problem, her doctor told my father it was his fault; that it was his second-hand smoke that gave her the cancer. He was never the same after that. He was there lovingly for my mother throughout her year-long illness. He never smoked in the house while she was there. More and more of her time was spent in the hospital.

One afternoon, he left the room for a smoke and I stayed there with her. It was at that moment she stopped breathing and despite a Code Blue and about eight hours of manual respiration, she was gone. I have to admit that in the flurry of activity, the signing of the big black and the realization that she was really dead, there came to fleeting thought that “this is when I supposed to have my cigarette. I don’t have to not smoke anymore.” Then, of course, there was no power on earth that could make me smoke. I had just witnessed my mother’s year long struggle with lung cancer! What a bitter irony!

My father suffered greatly after my mother’s death. Depression took its toll. He loved my mother so deeply and the doctor’s words blaming his second-hand smoke for her death kept going around in his head. Within less than two years, he was dead from congestive heart failure. I honestly think it was a broken heart.

My parents were amazing people. My mother was talented, creative and probably the most all around capable person I have ever known. People loved her outgoing personality and her zest for life. My father was brilliant; he was an inventor; he was a leader in his community. He was the man who first transmitted data over a telephone line – really! And yet, these wonderful and bright peoples’ lives were damaged by tobacco.

My parent’s things were coated with the same yellow scum that coated everything in my house years before. I cleaned it off furniture, art, crystal and more. I found that Dow bathroom cleaner would take the scum off the furniture without damaging the finish. Some of my parents; furniture was very special because my mother had refinished it. My favorite piece is a chifferobe that belonged to my grandfather and which my mother lovingly refinished. It stands in my entrance hall today.

What about me? Was I damaged too? Certainly, the 14 years I smoked were not good for me, nor were they good for our son (who fortunately has never even been tempted to smoke). Once I had a doctor tell me that if I had not quit, I would have been dead by now. That was probably 15 years ago. It has been 29 years since I smoked a cigarette. I am not around smoking any more. I request non-smoking seating in restaurants. There is no force in this universe or amount of money that could make me smoke even just one cigarette. I know that if I had even one, I would be hooked!

Soon after my mother’s diagnosis I became a volunteer for our local American Cancer Society. I guess it was my way of striking back. After her death, I continued to volunteer. It seems that our County has an unusually high cancer mortality rate and the cause is not clear. I was intrigued by this problem and agreed to work with our local County to chair a Cancer Task Force. This seventeen member multi-disciplinary task force looked into possible environmental and lifestyle causes of cancer, including lung cancer.

And, so here’s the kicker! I was running a meeting of the task force one evening and speaker was an expert in the causes of lung cancer. The expert reviewed various lung cancer types one after the other, but did not mention oat cell. Oat cell is kind of lung cancer that killed my mother; it is aggressive and fast growing. The expert’s response literally blew me away! I felt light-headed; I could believe what I was hearing! Oat cell cancer lung cancer is connected with chemical exposure more than smoking. Huh! My mother didn’t mess with chemicals. So, I asked “what kind of chemicals?” In an instant I knew that everything we had thought about her illness and how it happened was wrong. It turns out that the chemicals that often cause oat cell lung are the kind that were used to refinish furniture. My mother LOVED to refinish furniture. That was her hobby. Patience was not one of my mother’s virtues. She used the most powerful chemicals she could buy to strip off the old finish and she never wore a mask. She was not known to be a person who took the directions and precautions all that seriously. Usually she did her work with the garage door open, but little other ventilation.

Had we but known! My father would not have tortured himself with guilt about the second-hand smoke. My mother would have surely been more at peace with the whole situation. She was someone who always wanted to get to the bottom of a problem and find out what went wrong. Sadly, neither of them ever knew.

So, maybe it wasn’t the cigarettes after all! Still no doubt they made the situation worse.
Did this outcome change my opinion about smoking? No way! It is a terribly addictive habit and I personally will NEVER smoke again. Still, those 14 years may get me one day. No more smoking and no more furniture refinishing for me.

And, what about our task force? We never could get to any “smoking gun” for the cause of cancer in Anne Arundel County. What we do know is that with a lifetime of human behavior it is difficult to isolate the variables that may lead to death. More likely it is a confluence of factors that come together for any individual to make the cancer kick in. Lifestyle, environment, and heredity all matter. It is clear that more of these factors come together in our area than in most places. One thing for sure, we are on our own in this. The government can’t protect us from ourselves. Smoking is bad for you; chemicals can harm you; our environment has many problems and no one really knows what they all are. Smoking is a nasty, stupid habit that can destroy your life.

I see young women today smoking. Despite all the evidence, they keep on smoking. If only I could somehow make them understand.