So this is like the confession thread or something? Okay..........
I have had 5 heart surgeries and like Tom have an artificial mitral valve and an implanted defibrolator. I also have some stage of emphysema although it really doesn't matter which or how. I take 9 different prescription meds a day, some of them twice a day. I also do some supplement stuff.
Almost every medical problem I have had in the past 14 years is due to smoking. Now I also worked in a business where I was exposed to quantites of asbestos dust and hydrocarbon concentrations. But the smoking was the real thing. 2 1/2 to 3 packs a day for almost 40 years.....yeah, I continued smoking even after I had several heart surgeries. I finally quit in 2005 and haven't had a puff since but the damage was done.
I loved to smoke. I enjoyed the taste, the hand stuff, everything......and I knew it was killing me but I didn't care. I was truly classic in the "If I had known I was gonna' live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." But there was a lot of truth in that as my passion for some of the things I did put me in a physical risk........But I was young......and immortal.
My Dad died of lung cancer when he was 53 and I was 23. It was tough to watch and I knew I was doing that to myself but.......I loved the butts. Almost every activity I might have done I did with a cigarette in my hand(and mouth). Taking a shower, washing the dishes, before eating, after eating, driving(not racing however), On a motorcycle........you name it. Smoking was involved somehow.
I met and married Karen when I was 36 and she smoked as well. She quit a few years later and put some feelers toward me to do the same. I rebuffed all of those and to be truthful, she KNEW that arguing with me was a complete waste of time. Every so often she took a run at me on the subject and I said I'd try, blah, blah...........But I did try. Its easy to stop smoking.....I've done it thousands of times!
So in '97 I had a quad bypass and spent 10 days in the hospital. I had a cigarette in the first 5 minutes I was home. And it was like that with every surgery and ewvery hospitalization. I would try to promise myself and Karen that I would quit and the longest I ever made it before 2005 was less than 8 hours. 2005 was so close (as if the others hadn't been) that it scared me enough to try again and while in the hospital I figured a way I hadn't tried before and damn if it didn't work.
And now? Yeah, I wish I had it to do again in some ways but there isn't much I regret and mainly I would just want to keep doing it better and longer and forever! If you read my med file you'd swear I was bedridden and in terrible shape. But in the flesh I'm pretty normal looking. I run out of wind pretty quick and conserve what I have to do the most that I can. I use O2 at home but never out and about and I get along fine. Funny thing about the O2 at home. Its become like cigarettes used to be. If I'm just sitting around on the computer like now or watching the tube, I just automatically grab the cannula and suck up some good stuff. No real need but like a cigarette, I just enjoy it! Several times I have been in here with the cannula on , maybe for over an hour, and someone will come in......"Uh, Dad? Do you want the oxygen machine on?" I think the cannula is a security blanket...LOL.
The real drag is not the places I haven't been or the things I haven't done. And although I love my boys, they are both doing well now, at least to the point that I don't worry for them. The real thing it is all about is Karen. I know that many of you are happily married or whatever and that you're in love with your partner so you know how I feel.
Karen is far and away the best and greatest thing that ever happened in my life. She's my lifemate, my soulmate, my buddy my pal, my lover, and more than anything else........she's my best friend. Every day within me there are moments of sadnees and anger based in the knowledge that our time remaining together is short and the fault is mine. Gawddammit, the fault is MINE! How easy it would have been but I didn't do it and now we are both paying the price for my weakness.
So we do things now that some think are wasteful or frivolous or a waste of whatever little we have. Thankfully she feels like me as I do about her (I am also blessed) and she too knows that time is short. So we're going to do whatever we're up to doing and enjoy every moment we spend together....every moment. And we're going to do some sillyass things and waste money and enjoy it. Some of those things may not be the right thing to do but we're beyond giving a shit about what other people think is important or right........Like Pat Sky wrote, "Only love will endure."