It’s January 4th, and I’ve already broken two of my resolutions: to quit smoking and to stay on Nutrisystem until I lose all the weight I need to lose.
Quitting smoking is going to be the biggest challenge. I’ve smoked for twenty-one years and I like to smoke, despite all the health care issues about smoking. I’m an RN, my husband is a Respiratory Therapist. We both have seen more than a few people die from cancer and emphysema. I myself have lung disease, probably related to Lupus, which I was diagnosed with in 1994. I know I have to quit. I have an eleven year old son and he reminds me of when I was his age and my mother, who was a two-pack a day smoker, begged me to never try smoking. Ironically, I started in nursing school, where my circle of friends were mostly smokers and I just picked up the habit. Back then, you could smoke in the nurse’s lounge. Now, most hospitals even make their parking lots smoke free, and my husband has to sneak a smoke at work in his car, out in the freezing cold.
I, on the other hand, am disabled and basically homebound. I can smoke whenever I want to. We figured out that smoking was costing us about $600 a month, money we need to pay bills. I have two packs of Nicoderm patches on my bedside table, and I look at them every night, wondering when I’ll start using them. I wake up in the morning with the mindset of quitting, but for some reason, the feeling passes and I reach for the pack of cigarettes instead.
I tried Chantix, the new stop-smoking medication. I became hostile and homicidal. I actually threatened to kill my husband with a temperature probe used for cooking. I knew then that Chantix wasn’t in the cards for me. I actually tried it three times; two times I ended up in the ICU on a ventilator with massive pneumonia. I’m not sure if there is a connection between the Chantix and pneumonia, but I swore of Chantix at that point.
