My First Blog Entry - My cat Smokey and quitting smoking

Okay, I'll admit it. The title of this post is really unique, isn't it? Actually given that I've spent the first 37 years of my life having an opinion and I've been online for more than half of my life, it really is amazing that I haven't started a blog before now.

I lie. I actually made 2 previous attempts at starting one. The first was in 2001. I made one entry. In 2003 I made 2. This time, I'm determined to stick it out.

I have a good reason why too.

3 weeks ago Monday Smokey, one of my 7 cats (yes 7!) was diagnosed with oral squamous cell cancer. He was put out of his pain exactly 3 weeks after we found out. Smokey would have been 10 on April 16th. This was way too young for a cat to die. He went too fast. Oral sqamous cell cancer is a nasty form of cancer. I think I've shed more tears since we found out than I have in my entire life to date. I don't want to get into this any further right now. It's been an unbearable couple of days and a very tough few weeks.

I can't do anything to bring Smokey back. I couldn't do anything to stop the progression of the cancer he so valiantly was fighting. But I can do something for me and for my other cats - and that is to quit smoking.

I don't know if my smoking contributed to his cancer. I do know it certainly couldn't have helped. I've made efforts not to smoke around my cats in general. Maybe not as hard of an effort as I should have. I have been dealing with guilt about smoking since Smokey was diagnosed.

I started smoking when I was 16. By my early 20's, I was at a pack a day. (In Canada, packs are 25 cigarettes.) I never understood why. My mother smoked and I used to be a very vocal anti-smoker. I hated the smell. I couldn't understand why people did it. It caused awful illnesses. Yet somehow I managed to start.

Around 30, my smoking increased slightly. I've averaged 30-40 cigarettes a day since then.

I've tried to quit. Many, many times. But something always seems to happen. My last real quitting attempt was a few years ago. I was suffering through it, but I had made it almost to the end of my third month. Then a tax auditor showed up at the door and gave me 2 weeks to get together 4 years of tax records. I continued NOT smoking until the night before the audit. I just couldn't concentrate. I now know that it was a cop-out. Smoking does not help me concentrate. I just wasn't equipped to deal with the stress cigarette-free. I now know that was a cop-out as well.

I've hated smoking since around the age of 29. I mean, I really hated it. I remember the trigger moment for me where this hatred started. I was in a restaurant in Old Montreal with my husband. We were in the smoking section. It was a hot summer night and even as a smoker, the lack of ventilation and smoke in the room were bothering me. A couple walked in. The woman was pregnant. I'm not sure how far along, but she could have been due any time. I got David, my husband, to look at them. I was really surprised at her coming into a stinky smoking section like that to begin with. I was more surprised when I saw the woman light a cigarette up when she sat down. Surprised isn't the word. Shocked. Appalled. Yeah, those words are much better.

The reality of the little nico-demon and the hold it has over smokers really hit me then. Did this woman really want to poison her unborn child with thousands of toxins? How could she do this in public? Didn't she feel shame?

I had a cigarette lit myself when she had lit hers. I stubbed it out. Crumpled up my package. Stopped then. That quit attempt was my first one. I think if I had really thought about quitting prior to that, I might very well have been able to have stayed away from cigarettes. But I had no knowledge at the time about how just one cigarette would get me hooked again.

I won't even begin to guess how many times I've tried to quit since then. Dozens? I know that I always have nicorette and the patch on hand - being prepared for my next attempt. I've tried Zyban and Wellbutrin. Have both sitting in my cabinet too. Zyban worked well for me but I got anxiety attacks while on it (which I never had before starting on it). I think the anxiety attacks were caused by my aversion to taking any type of medication. Irony there for you - I'm more worried about the small potential for side effects of a prescription drug than I am about the effects of smoking!

I've downloaded and started up 'quit meters' more times than I care to think about. I've gone to bed many nights intending on getting up smoke free in the morning.

I have a lot of good reasons to quit. My mom died at 67 after having had a few heart attacks and 2 strokes. Instead of enjoying retirement with my dad, from almost the time she retired, she was sick. The last few years of her life were hell for both her and my dad. I've seen first hand with smoking can do.

I started having problems with my breathing around the age of 30. Had tests done and it turns out I developed a mild case of asthma. (I had mild asthma as a teen, but never had to do anything for it.) The asthma has been worse off and on over the past few years. A late night at the computer with lots of smokes and I wake up being unable to breathe. I start off my morning with the same routine - a cup of coffee, a halls cough drop and a cigarette. I need the cough drop now in order to have my first cigarette of the day. How stupid can you be?

I know that whenever I have been on a quit, I have never had to use my inhaler. Is smoking worth having asthma issues?

I'm worried about emphysema. Really worried. January 2004, I got really sick. Sick to the point that I actually coughed up blood. Gosh, that was awful. I was too sick to smoke, yet as soon as I felt well enough, i started again. Lung cancer scares me as do many other kinds of cancer, but not as much as emphysema.

What does this have to do with Smokey getting oral scc? For the first time in my life, I feel really scared. I saw how fast he progressed with cancer. I've now lived with a living being with aggressive cancer. I don't want that to happen to me. I know that the number one cancer to kill is lung cancer. I know that 90% of people with lung cancer are smokers or former smokers. Most of the rest get it from second-hand smoke. I saw some recent numbers on the odds of a woman today dying of lung cancer. 1 in 18. That includes non-smokers as well. So continuing to smoke, I'm basically looking at 1 in 5-6 odds of dying from lung cancer.

I had a sign yesterday that the timing was right for me. A further reminder. Peter Jennings announced that he had lung cancer. He didn't give details as far as the type of cancer or the stage it is at, but he is starting chemo - which probably means it is far along. He's 66 and apparently stopped smoking just over 20 years ago but started again after 9/11 (permanently? I don't know). Regardless, he DID stop for all that time and he still got lung cancer. That really sucks. You have to wonder how he felt about starting again. If he hadn't, would he have still gotten it? Was the damage from all those years ago?

Sharon