Great American Smokeout
Each year the American Cancer Society sponsors the Great American Smokeout.
This is an event to encourage Americans to stop tobacco smoking. The Great American Smokeout challenges smokers to quit cigarettes for 24 hours with the hopes that this decision will continue forever.
We know that changing habits can be hard, but we believe in you, we know you can do it!
This year we want to introduce you to two of our favorite patients, Rita and Barbara. Both are life-long smokers and both have successfully quit smoking in 2021!
We hope their stories will inspire you as much as they have inspired us!
Meet Barbara
Hello Fellow Smokers!
I say that, even though I haven’t had a puff for over 8 months, since February 16, 2021. Maybe, after I’ve been smoke-free for a year, I might call myself an “ex-smoker.” I’m 75 years old, and I had smoked for 62 years. I’d tried many times to quit, when I was younger, but finally became convinced it would never happen for me. Through the many years, I watched ashtrays disappear from coffee tables and office desks, and finally, even from cars! I became more and more isolated, as I’d have to leave one function or another to go stand outside in the cold and rain and get my nicotine fix.
Then, late last year, the doctor started seeing suspicious lung nodules on my CT and on a follow-up PET scan. I went into Sutter Hospital for what was supposed to have been a morning appointment, to get a lung biopsy. The biopsy went well, but then, an hour later, I became one of the small percentage of people who suffer a collapsed lung following biopsy. I was told they needed to insert a tube to help my lung re-inflate, and I’d have to stay in the hospital for a few days. I told them I needed the nicotine patch, as I was a smoker.
All went as expected the next few days, but the surprise was: the patch really worked this time! I was feeling no withdrawal symptoms or anxiety. So, on the way home from the hospital, we stopped at a drug store, and bought a supply. You’re supposed to use the 21 mg patch for two months, then the 14 mg patch for a month, and the 7 mg patch for a month. At the end of the first month, I forgot to change the patch after 24 hours, at noon. So I thought, “Why not wait an extra hour or two? It would save money.” So, I waited for some smoking urges to kick in and…they never did! That turned out to be the last patch I used.
Also, against common advice, I never went around and threw out all my cigarettes and lighters. I still have a drawer full of cigarettes, lighters, patches, and lozenges. For me, this keeps me from EVER panicking. For other people, I hear it’s just the opposite: they can’t quit unless they clean house. And, as a further more-than-lucky reward, the lung biopsy showed no cancer! Yeah, no one was more surprised than me!
So now: I sleep 7 or 8 hours, pretty much straight through, instead of in two-hour pieces, with an hour in between. I don’t cough AT ALL. I took my car to the professional car wash, then set off an odor-removing bomb in it, overnight. I can take long car trips with non-smokers, if I want. I’ve been running my carpet cleaner and washing walls, but I’m 75 – it’s taking a little time. Also: my doctor and my dentists LOVE ME!
Hope you’re able to join me as a Fellow Non-Smoking Smoker!
Meet Rita
I started smoking my first year in college. That was 55 years ago. Many of us sat in the Student Union Building to smoke, talk and eat while we were waiting for our next class. For me, it was a chance to meet friends. I moved to California with my parents the summer of my senior year in high school and didn’t have a chance to make many new friends that year.
Actually, I liked to smoke and I liked my brand of cigarettes, Virginia Slims. You know the ad, “You’ve come a long way baby! This was the first cigarette brand marketed specifically for women by Phillip Morris in 1968.
One day in July, 2021 I had my dental checkup and cleaning with Dr. Tiffany. She said to me, “You have to quit these things. I can clean your teeth, but I can’t fix—-. Then she added, I don’t mean to be judgmental. I told her she has never been judgmental. Well, her words kept ringing in my ears. I had a talk with myself –”you idiot” So, a couple of weeks later, I told the people who order my cigarettes that I would be quitting. I thoroughly enjoyed my last Virginia Slim cigarettes and then quit cold turkey the next morning.
So, three months later, I can report that I never had any physical withdrawal. I was just more tired. I still fidget a little. That’s it. When the time is right, you can do it!
Leave a reply →
