To Michelle,
Both my husband and I were two pack or more a day smokers until about
30 years ago when we gave up smoking "cold turkey" . We went through an
extremely difficult period and even now the urge occasionally hits us. I'm
fine but my husband's job of pipe line welder amid dusty construction work
continued to wreck havoc on his lungs. After his most recent bout of
pneumonia, he needed to use oxygen full time and was even reduced to using a
wheel chair, his health steadily going downhill. He was diagnosed with
emphysema and chronic bronchitis. (He's 71 and always been active)
We recently heard about the National Emphysema Test Trials, sponsored
partly by Medicare and he was able to enroll at Ohio State, one of the
participating universities, where he is in a pulmonary rehabilitation
program and has made, for him, tremendous progress. He's hoping when his
strength returns sufficiently, to be selected for lung reduction surgery,
wherein up to a third of the diseased portion of his lungs is removed. But
that is in the future. He's happy with his life being gradually handed back
to him with the progress he's made so far.
To qualify for this program, you must be a non-smoker for a certain
number of months.
I'll say at this time that until a person cares enough about his life
and his loved ones to give up smoking by himself, there's nothing you can do
except watch him slowly kill himself and suffer along with him. Sorry that
I have no solution for that. Marian