Joanne Scullion

My mother died not long ago of a totally preventable illness: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It is caused by smoking.

It is a hideous disease that leaves in its wake the walking dead. COPD patients who cannot or will not quit smoking are like alcoholics. They can virtually taste the cigarette that they crave with every ounce of their being. As a health-care professional in a hospital, I see COPD patients who tell me that all they want is that cigarette.

This winter, every time I saw a COPD patient gasping for breath it occurred to me that I was seeing my mother.

I myself started smoking at the age of 28. Now, at the age of 58, I have been smokefree since the first Sunday in December. It is not easy, but I have the support of my children, my husband and my colleagues.

It is by far one of the most difficult things I have ever done, but the decision was made easier because there is no smoking in our new house, my husband and daughter do not smoke, my friends do not smoke, there is no smoking in public buildings – and I do not want my granddaughters to have the memory of grandma smelling like smoke.

There were six children in my family, five girls and a boy. I am the oldest. We all smoked at one time or another.

My parents smoked Export Plain – cigarettes without filters. I remember that, at the age of 14, I stole two of my mother’s cigarettes and one puff made me so sick that I gave the other cigarette to a friend.

Thus ended my desire to smoke, but not forever; I started for real 14 years later, after a less-than-amiable divorce. That was back in the 1980s, when I was the oddman out; everyone smoked and I did not.

My epiphany came during a visit with one of my sisters late last fall. I realized that the last thing I wanted was to end up like my mom, on a Bi-PAP (bi-level positive airway pressure) machine, a kind of ventilator that pushes the carbon dioxide out of the lungs. When I see patients in the emergency room on their BiPAP machines – with every ounce of their being trying just to do something we take for granted: breathe – I see in my mind’s eye my mother’s blue eyes.

I quit because at age 58 I have a lot of living to do. I quit because that living includes being able to swim and skate with my grandchildren. I quit because I want to see my daughter graduate from university. I quit because my husband and I are young enough to travel.

But most of all, I quit because I never want my children to go through what my siblings and I did when my mother was dying of COPD.

It is terrible to see someone you love gasping for breath.

I hope that my efforts will continue to bear fruit. I am not trying to preach or to convert. But if my youngest sister, who started smoking a pack a day at age 16, can quit, I guess I can. Or anyone, for that matter.

Joanne Scullion is a registered practical nurse. She lives in N.D.G.

Source: The Montreal Gazette