Why do smokers wait until it is too late? - Dr Viv - 6Minutes
Smoking makes me angry. Of course, there’s nothing novel or innovative in that statement, and everything that I am about to write has been said many times before. And probably by
me!
But, by chance, I’ve had a recent run of smoking related deaths and severe morbidity in my practice, and I’m beginning to become frustrated at the futility of anti smoking campaigns, and at the willingness of my patients, friends and work colleagues to give up fifteen years of their lives, and a substantial portion of their hard earned income to the cigarette companies.
My mind hearkens back to the early days of debate about seatbelt legislation. (Yes, that’s how old I am). “If I want to take the risk, and not wear a seatbelt, it’s my civil right as an individual, and affects no one but myself”.
The hospital wards and cemeteries are full of people who have made the “individual choice” to smoke. The emotional cost to their loved ones is huge, as they spend their long awaited retirement caring for permanently disabled spouses, or grieving prematurely for the years of which they have been robbed.
The perplexing part for me is the complete inability to give up the smokes – that is, until they get the dreaded diagnosis. Suddenly, after numerous failed attempts, they can inevitability give up in one day. Unfortunately, by this stage, it’s usually too late, and all the regrets in the world do not give them back the lost years.
Joan had her first brush with lung cancer fifteen years earlier. By the time she finally managed to give up, she had her second,complete with metastases. Admittedly she was well advanced in years, and some might say “well, you’ve got to die of something”!
But Joan’s death was painful and drawn out,and came soon after nursing her terminally ill husband. She had planned to travel, and finally enjoy all the grandchildren. Cigarettes robbed her of that chance.
Barry is only in his early seventies. A loving husband, father and grandfather, he loved his fishing and his work in the Lions’ Club. I tried for years to get him to give up the smokes. He couldn’t. The day that I diagnosed his lung cancer with cerebral metastases, he stopped smoking – easily. He doesn’t miss it. He can now no longer drive, fish or make independent decisions. The brain secondaries are killing him by inches. He should have had another fifteen happy years.
Charles died of emphysema. His last ten years were spent in a chair, too dyspnoeic to walk. He repeatedly offered to visit schools to espouse the evils of smoking, thinking that one look at him would deter the children from ever lighting up. It probably wouldn’t have worked, and he couldn’t even manage a sentence without oxygen, so it didn’t happen.
I recently attended a funeral of a young mother who died of a smoking related illness. As the hearse departed, her devastated eldest daughter lit up a smoke, as did many of the
mourners. I just don’t get it.
Dr Viv is a rural GP
