I had a friend who started smoking very young, about 14, and when he died from it at 28, I think
it was because of denial. He didn't think it would happen to him.
He stopped talking very much, went silent, and when his wife kept saying,
why don't you speak, he opened his mouth and showed her the large
hole eaten all the way through his tongue. The front half of his tongue
was hanging on by a couple pieces of skin. He was still chain smoking.
He didn't want to tell anyone because he was in denial that mouth cancer
was happening to him. At that point, he had to go to a doctor and accept
that he had a short time to live. He soon lost his entire lower jaw, then his life.

We all have that feeling of denial to some extent that the worst won't happen
to us, but with the information we have now, it is up to us to face our unhealthy
habits. I'm still working on recognizing that I'm not as young and healthy as I
was in the past. I still have that younger "me" in my self image and need to
stop the denial of aging.