'Suffering' to wellness

(''Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it’. – Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

John Hughes was one of my favorite storytellers. My favorite Hugh’s film is Ferris Buerller’s Day Off. Hughes dies of sudden cardiac arrest last week while out on his daily walk. He was 59. Hughes probably never saw it coming. The problem with sudden cardiac death is that half of the time the first symptom is a heart attack. Stay on top of your health. See your doc and ask about risk factors and tests to determine whether you are risk. And rest in peace, John.)

This one goes out to one that I love, my uncle Art. I am writing this on Saturday morning after learning he is back the hospital. He has been intubated. He cannot breathe on his own.

Long story short, Art has COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Things are not looking good for him. He is on more than a dozen medications, has oxygen tanks and inhalers all over the house.

And he still smokes.

The nicotine in cigarettes is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. And in some people, the river of addiction runs deep.

My river flows deep. I smoked for 20 years knowing that cigarettes kill. I belong to the first generation to learn about the dangers of smoking in grade school. When my brother Todd and I attended Nicholas Murray Butler High School in Elizabeth, N.J., we attended an assembly at which a guest speaker told us about the dangers of smoking and nicotine and the horrors of living with respiratory disease.

We stared in horror at a pickled cancerous lung in a jar (That was disgusting and too much for kids. And whose lung was that anyway?).

When school let out, we ran home, cut up our mom’s cigarettes and flush them down the toilet. I imagine that she wanted to beat the hell out of us for doing that, and who could blame her? Those freaking cigarettes did not grown on trees. And this was in the 70s, the era before people thought anything and everything was child abuse, so there were no calls to the Department of Child of Family Services. In the ‘70s, if my brother and I had called DCFS, a Paul Mall-addicted social worker would have showed up at the door and would have said, “Those damn kids did what? I’ll help ya bury them!”

Anyway…addiction…I want a smoke right now and I am fighting lung and heart sarcoidosis (unfortunately, I cannot go to the hospital to visit Art because the key drugs treating my sarcoid, prednisone and methotrexate, also suppress my immune system leaving me especially vulnerable to all the nastiness lurking invisible in the air of medical units). Breathing can be a chore. I cannot remember the days when I did not think about breathing. I think I have to go back to spring 2006.

And still, I want a cigarette.

The last time I saw Uncle Art, he was smoking. He sneaks out of the house buys a pack of cigs and smokes in his car or on his terrace. My Aunt Lorraine knows, but what can she do? Addiction is overwhelming and the addicted are impossible to help unless they want to help themselves. Success rates for intervention – I do not give a damn how easy things wrap up on TV talk shows – are bad.

The only way to overcome addiction is suffering through it and knowing that the craving, sometimes very strong, will be with you for the rest of your life. I am taking Chantix to take the edge off my craving, but I still think about smoking every day. Sometimes it is overwhelming. For example, the more I write on this subject the more I want a Malboro(my brand, but I'll smoke anything).

However, I know that one more smoke is one more nail in my coffin and I refuse to go out that way. I am not carrying around a damned oxygen tank in the future I visualize for myself. I am lighter, stronger and kick boxing in the future I visualize for myself. So I suffer through the craving, the feeling of a little, hairy, foul-smelling personal demon impatiently tapping me on the shoulder, demanding I give in.

And I am praying and rooting for my Uncle Art and Aunt Lorraine.

'Quest for a lid' update

I now realize that my major malfunction was my inability or unwillingness to try on clothes. I hate shopping for clothes. I do not necessarily hate hats. I hated hats because I could not find one that fits. I could not find one that fits because I was in too much of a rush to try them on. I am changing my MO. I’ll take a moment to see if the stuff fits, which means I won’t be frustrated later when I get it home.

Now I have four new hats. All of them fit. If I do not lose them, I will be ready for next spring and summer.