I'm very tired. I will write, nevertheless, as I promised.
Why am I tired? Family illness. My mother is very ill.
From smoking.
For those of you who have seen my diaries, my own struggle to quit smoking -- 11 years was no fun. I was cranky. I was mean. But day by day, I got by. And quitting was the best thing that I ever did.
But mama kept smoking as she had for --- gulp --- 50 years.
After my 1 year anniversary, I became a trained smoking cessation facilitator through American Cancer Society -- using the FreshStart method as I had done to quit.
I became -- yes -- an annoying former smoker. I still make fun of the masters of the universe -- the big tough guys on the streets of New York, hiding in doorways. But I became effective at helping people quit. I learned how to nag people properly.
My greatest participant, however, was my mama. I nagged her just right, and about 4 years ago, at the age of 75, she finally quit, for good.
Now in my training as a facilitator, I was taught that scare tactics don't really work at getting people to quit. But I remember a video when I quit of a young woman, mid-30s, who was dying from cancer from smoking. As I had already quit, the image stayed and stayed with me.
Tonight, my mom is battling for her last few days with advanced stage small cell lung cancer. If you Google that, you'll learn that this form of cancer has one cause -- smoking.
It is likely that she will pass in a timeframe measured in weeks or a few short months. They will say it was from cancer. But we here know, it was from tobacco addiction.
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