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If I could change but one thing in my life it would bemy choice to light my first cigarette. I was not the type to smoke. I grew up in the small town of Mooresville, NC, where no one smoked in high school except those we considered the “bad boys.” Our parents certainly smoked. Clouds of smoke filled homes, restaurants and parties during my youth.
We had student assembly once a week in high school. At least once a year someone would bring a blackened lung to an assembly and talk to us about the dangers of smoking. I vowed to never be that stupid.
I attended Salem College in Winston Salem in the late sixties. I found myself to be one of the few girls in the school who didn’t smoke. At that time, even the air of Winston Salem smelled of tobacco. By my sophomore year, I had broken up with my high school sweetheart and was dating other college boys. I was soon labeled a “goody goody.” I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. I went to church. I needed one bad vice. I was scared to drink, so I decided to smoke on dates. I found the “lightest” cigarettes that I could and bought my first pack.
I did like the feeling of belonging as I smoked with the cool girls in the rec room of my dorm. However, I became addicted to the nicotine in less than a month. I did not understand that I was losing my choice to smoke when I picked up that first cigarette. The addiction part was not understood at the time.
I was so addicted that I needed a fix as soon as I got up in the morning. I was soon a pack-a-day smoker. I tried to stop. I would buy one pack at a time and swear it was my last, only to find myself at the vending machine—located in each dorm—as soon as I had smoked the last. I was an addict in every sense of the word. I hated every cigarette I smoked, but I could not stop.
My family supposedly did not know that I smoked—ha! I certainly could not smoke in front of them. Holidays and vacations became hell. I needed to smoke. I was a nervous wreck when I was in a position where I couldn’t. MISERABLE...I WAS A SLAVE.
I got married and continued to smoke. I became pregnant and continued to smoke. My OB-GYN actually told me not to try quitting because it would be too stressful for the fetus! In the fourth month of my pregnancy, I had a partial separatio of the placenta—a text book complication for a smoking mother. My daughter was born full term weighing 4 pounds, 6 ounces.
The struggles that infant endured, the impaired lung function of my child and the learning issues she faced rip my heart out as I write. I truly did not realize the consequences when I continued to smoke throughout pregnancy. But the tobacco industry knew these effects well before I even started smoking.
Despite what I saw and what I knew, I STILL could not quit. I tried. I shook and nerved out and drove in pajamas early some mornings to buy another pack. One morning, I woke to find my little daughter flushing my cigarettes down the toilet. I could not have quit at that time even to save my child’s life. It was that bad. Instead, I tried to avoid smoking in the room with her, I’d open the car window...How could I have been so totally stupid?
Eventually, at 30 I developed asthma. My allergy testing showed that I was actually allergic to tobacco. The specialist told me that I had to quit or I was going to die. I burst into tears. I knew that I could not quit. He told me that he was going to help me. Nicorette had just come out on the market. I bought my first prescription, smoked my last cigarette, and have been smoke-free from that moment.
The cost to my health has been monumental, however. I have asthma, heart disease, and a spot on my left lung. I am now so sensitive to smoke and tobacco chemicals that I have near fatal reactions when I come in contact. It has affected my hearing. Severe tinnitus has resulted.
When I am exposed to active smoking (other people smoking), I have immediate life threatening asthma attacks. I often go into anaphylactic shock. My blood pressure drops suddenly to as low as 60 over 40. I often have hives; my throat constricts. I develop a bone rattling cough. I feel pressure on my chest. I have trouble breathing. I must inject myself with epinephrine before I lose consciousness.
When I enter a space where smoking has occurred or come in contact with a smoker, I always react immediately. I am like a canary in a coal mine. My body tells me, and everyone else, that there are dangerous poisons in the air. The first signal with secondhand smoke, and what they now call thirdhand smoke (the remaining toxins on clothes, hair, furniture, carpet, etc.), is a tightening in my head due to the pressure from my swelling Eustachian tubes (in the ears). Next, I lose my voice as my vocal cords become affected. I usually begin to cough at this point.
I now have tinnitus, a loud buzzing/humming in my head. I believe that it was caused by the repeated exposure and inflammation of the Eustachian tubes throughout my life. For sure the debilitating noise is much worse when I come in contact with smoke. It is affecting my hearing as well.
I also have heart disease. Since we now know that blood flow to the heart is affected with even a brief exposure to tobacco smoke, I feel that any exposure increases my chances of having a coronary event.
Because of my inability to stop smoking, we chose not to have another child. My daughter is doing well now. She received a BSN in Nursing in 2006, making all A’s her final semester. She is now working on a pulmonary floor, but ironically, she will never be able to blow up a balloon.
I am delighted with the new law, but feel that it doesn’t go far enough. Every worker deserves a smoke-free work place. The exclusion of private clubs is absurd. Do members and staff not deserve the same safe air?
Hopefully, the bans will help people quit smoking. That will be such a blessing to both those who quit and the rest of us.
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