Quit Smoking Story
by Gira Sauers

I had never smoked in 38 years of my life, but one day after watching most of my friends and family smoke throughout my life, I was very stressed out and took up the offer of one cigarette from a friend. I was hooked at the idea immediately and the excitement of having something new in my life was very powerful. I thought it was relaxing and calming. After two months I was hooked. I justified the smell in my car, home, clothes, hair and in my mouth. I justified the 5.00 per pack every day. I justified my loss of energy, and laziness. I became a smoker...and I liked it.

The denial was very easy to succumb to because the physical effects of the nicotine over ruled my common sense. I was happily on my way to getting sick and taking years off my life. I ignored television commercials telling me to quit, and I would look past bill boards with pictures of rotting lungs as I drove. I knew my Aunts were both very sick with Emphysyma from smoking, but they lived out of state so I didn't have to see them dying. I wasn't really that close to either of them so it was more a matter of waiting to hear if they died. Then one day my mother called me to tell me that my one Aunt was moving back to my town. She wanted to get to know me and my kids and this part of her family apparently before she died. I became close to her very quickly.

She was beautiful, funny, talented, loving, caring and so much more that I never knew. She was also a two pack a day smoker for over twenty years. She was also about to die from Lung cancer, and stomach cancer. It had taken its toll on her body finally as sad as that was. One day we smoked together as we sat and talked about life. We talked about when I was a little girl...She coughed a lot between breaths and at one point coughed so badly she had blood in her tissues. I put my cigarette out in disgust. She continued to talk to me while she smoked as she asked me to get her oxygen mask because she couldn't breath. I got it and put it on her face with tears building up in my throat. I watched her as she sucked in the oxygen hard....then she'd take a puff of the cigarette and then take the oxygen. I was dumbfounded...I watched her cling to life in her last days while at the same time smoking one cigarette after another. That night they called me to tell me that my Aunt was in the hospital on her death bed and was asking for me. I was scared as I drove to the hospital to see her.

I stopped and got a pack of smokes on my way and smoked atleast three over the ten minute drive there. I threw the pack in my glovebox to have when I got back into my car. I made my way to the hospital room sick to my stomach wanting another smoke but couldn't When I got there my Aunt was really in bad shape. Oxygen was being pumped into her nose, tubes were all over her face, nose, and arms. She had a breathing machine helping her lungs. It was the scariest sight I had ever seen. I was heart broken. She had become my most favorite relative in my life that I had just become close to weeks earlier. She looked so bad, so gray, so cold, so old...she was only 58. I leaned over her face and gave her a kiss, and told her I loved her. I could smell the cigarettes on her hair and face...She opened her eyes to look at me and said my name...she said it so softly I almost didn't understand.

She asked me to lift her oxygen mask so she could speak to me. I sat and talked with her for about a half hour slowly I rubbed her forehead with a soft moist cloth.She told me that she wished me well in my life and that she regretted having to cut our life together so short and that she knew she was about to die from her cancers. She grabbed my right hand gently and looked me in the eyes and with tears in her eyes she begged me to quit smoking. She asked me if I wanted to be in her shoes right there and then. She asked me to imagine that I was my daughter and she was seeing me die like that. It made me break down. I started crying so bad that I couldn't stop. As sick as she was she wiped my eyes as she struggled to breath and told me she would see me in heaven. She told me that I had only wasted a few months of my life by smoking and to promise her that I would do whatever it took not to end up like her in that bed...so sick...so exhausted. I made that promise to her that night...As I drove home I threw that pack I had bought on the way out my window terrified to dare to smoke. I left my Aunt that night hoping she'd get better...but she didn't. I was called on Valentines day to be told she died.

I was so deeply struck with grief I cried for three days at the feelings of so much pain by her death. I imagine every time I crave for a cigarette my Aunt lying there...dying from smoking...her clinging for air...her last attempts to talk to me through her oxygen mask...and I never smoked again. I would never ever want my kids to go through that with me. Not now. Not ever. If you are serious about quitting but can't seem to do it, I would encourage you to volunteer at a local hospital, or a cancer treatment center, or even at a graveyard. You will see that 70% or more of all deaths and serious illnesses are because of smoking. Your heart will break as you see them. You might bond with someone to only discover that they have passed on in the night the next day you come in to see them. They couldn't stop either, and it beat them. Don't let it beat you. It didn't get me.

Face what you will be if you don't quit. Go see it first hand, watch sick people cling for air, cling for life. As hard as it may be to do, it will eat away at the denial that tobacco has filled you with I assure you. Do it! Do it for you. Do it for people who love you. Ask yourself today in a quiet alone moment when no one else is around...If I were dying today because of cancer from smoking, who's heart would I break as they knelt by my side....as I clung to life...my mom...my dad...my kids...my husband...my best friend...what affect would my death have on their lives today? Now...weigh it out...is that affect on those who love you worth that cigarette I did it...many thousands of others did it...Now you do it...Dont die for a ciggerette...Dont pay to kill yourself, as thats what you are doing. Dont become my Aunt... I miss her. Who will miss you?