Friday, August 21, 2020

Smoking

 My grandmother was advised by her doctor in the 1930's to take up smoking, on the theory that drawing smoke in would exercise her lungs and make her lungs stronger.  She quit sometime in the 1960's, I remember her elaborate china lighter, and a bronze smoking stand with a china ashtray on the top.  She gave the smoking stand to my Aunt Edith, who smoked until the end of her life.  Edith died in her late 50's.  She had a terrible headache for a couple of days, finally went to see her doctor, who sent her to the hospital for a CAT scan. The scan revealed a huge aneurysm in her brain.  It was an emergency and far beyond the capacity of the small hospital she was in so they transferred her by helicopter.  The only helicopter ride in her life (take that helicopter ride while you can enjoy it.)  She asked the helicopter crew to pause for a couple of minutes on the roof of the hospital so she could smoke - my father was appalled.   My father started smoking when he was in the Army near the end of World War II.  He quit in the early 1950's, LIFE magazine was running full color pictures of the lungs of dead smokers, he wanted to learn to fly, he decided if he quit smoking he could use the money to learn to fly, and he did. 


I wonder, did someone quit, or simply leave this behind?     

20 comments:

  1. todd's father died of lung cancer in 2005. that man smoked 3 packs a day. we blame todd's and his brother's health problems on dad's second-hand smoke.

    at $7-$8 a pack, way too expensive just to kill yourself. nasty smelly filthy shit.

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    1. remarkable dirty, I have a few neighbors who won't smoke in their own apartments.

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  2. My dad started smoking at 15 and smoked for over 50 years. A pack a day. Never had cancer, yet his aunt Hattie took up smoking very late, smoked two years, gave it up, and dead from cancer the next year. The body boogles.

    He was the only smoker in my family with exception to my uncle and I smoking our one yearly cigar.

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    1. There are many mysteries in the human body.

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  3. Quitters usually crush the pack; at least that's what I did EVERY TIME I quit.

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  4. Anonymous8/21/2020

    Dunno. My mother still smokes at the age of 86. Her doctor daughter in law tells her she won't do well if she is admitted to hospital but also tells her, don't worry about your strong paniedeine addiction at your age.

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    1. If I live that long, I will take up all of the bad habits that I have avoided to live longer.

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  5. Pre-mature rapture? Heh. My mother smoked like two chimneys. At least two packs a day, probably more. She made us light her cigarettes using our gas stove. Unfiltered Pell Mells. Gross! It's amazing none of us died from secondhand smoke inhalation. I smoked one ciggie, got sick and never touched another the rest of my life. That woman was smoking while using an oxygen tank. Died at 54 from a different cancer, not lung.

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    1. The one thing that hospice would freak out about, was someone on oxygen smoking.

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  6. My mother, my sister and my aunt all died from lung cancer, all life-long smokers.

    I have never smoked in my life.

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    1. The last I knew, lung cancer was the leading cancer causing death in women in the USA. Not the one that gets all of the press and the walks.

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  7. In June, I marked my 30 year anniversary of quitting smoking. Starting to smoke was the stupidest decision I ever made.

    Smokers who can't quit should switch to e-cigarettes. You can use them with oxygen machines because there's no combustion. That's my PSA for the day!

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    1. I understand quitting is very difficult,30 years - a lifetime.

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  8. I smoked a pack a day for 52 years, switched to e-cigs until I couldn't find the brand I liked anymore, so I quit altogether -- today is my 77th birthday and I have been smoke-free for 5 years now.
    I live at a Senior Residence and we have smokers in here ... they have to go outside and some of them are on oxygen! Boggles the mind!

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    1. Five years has real health benefits

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  9. I'm going to say that someone said "that's it, I'm not smoking another cigarette" and got up and left!
    No one in my family smoked except my grandfather who smoked a pipe and only in the evenings.

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  10. oh the embarrassment. we all smoked back then. I wonder how much of today's pastimes our descendents will look back in aghast.

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    Replies
    1. Times change, understanding of health changes.

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