My story is actually more common than the big tobacco companies want to admit. I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for thirty one years. I am now 53 years young, and grateful to be alive!

One night about 9 years ago I became short of breath. I was terrified! After several more of these attacks, I bought an over-the-counter asthma inhalers. A few months went by, then I started waking up short of breath sometimes. The attacks would come and go, for several years I just ignored them and treated each attack with the inhaler. I kept on smoking like a chimney, then things changed dramatically. I was diagnosed with bronchitis.

Smoking cigarettes

After the worst bronchitis was gone, the shortness of breath stayed. I went back to my doctor, who sent me to a pulmonologist. The specialist told me that I had COPD – Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Of course, I was instructed to stop smoking, I barely cut back at all.

Several years later, I found I had trouble walking up stairs. Then I simply could not climb stairs with groceries. Finally, I could not climb stairs at all. We moved to a house without stairs. I was now using my medicines in the middle of the night. In short, I got to the point sooner than later that I could not walk from my car to my office desk. I threw in the towel and filed for disability. Today I can barely walk twenty feet without portable oxygen in my nose!

I was admitted for a two-month stay in the hospital with serious pneumonia and a secondary infection. One of my lungs collapsed, my blood pressure began to drop steadily, and I was put on a ventilator.

My children were so scared. My twenty-five year old son has been my hero and knight in shining armor through this recent trouble, always at my side. My eleven year-old daughter has given me the will to fight to stay alive. I am so fortunate. When I get out of here, I pray to God I will stay away from cigarettes.

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