Pictured: Advanced Oral Cancer
Nicholas McCormick's picture was on the front page of today's TimesDaily. The Muscle Shoals High School student was depicted smoking what appears to be a 72 mm cigarette. Nicholas states that he smokes a pack a day and thinks that he will die happy. Sorry, Nicholas, I don't agree with you. Let's see how your life will play out.
2010: If you just have to smoke when you eat, you aren't able to dine in any nice restaurants. That's really okay, since you probably can't get a nice girl to go out with someone who smokes.
2015: You tried college, but had to drop out. There just wasn't enough time to study and work enough hours to support your cigarette habit. The average price of a pack of cigarettes is $5.50, so you have to come up with at least $165.00 a month for your enjoyable habit, not to mention rent, food, gasoline, car payment, and car insurance.
It's not like you can find a decent job either. The Human Resource managers can smell the smoke on you, see the nicotine stains on your fingernails. No, it looks like you're going to be living a blue collar life.
2020: You wake up each morning with a smoker's cough. You have to cough up yellow sputum before you can even light up your first one for the day.
By now you're married--to another smoker, of course. You and she drop your child off before going to work, a child that's also coughing because of your smoking. A child confined to a closed vehicle for one hour with two smokers consumes the equivalent of eight cigarettes. You probably haven't noticed how underweight your child is because you don't have insurance at your blue collar job and there's no money for regular doctor visits.
2030: Your smoker's cough lasts for over an hour each morning now--and you sometimes cough up blood. There's still no insurance, so you make a mental note to cut back on your smoking. It's hard to do since your wife still smokes and by now so does your child. That son or daughter you love so much wants to be just like Daddy and Mummy...and that means smoking just like you do.
2035: You're back in the hospital for the third time in as many years. You've lost one lung...or maybe it was the esophagus. That's easy to cure; they removed part of your intestine to replace it so you can eat, but of course you can't speak because your larynx was removed with the esophagus.
2036: You've just pushed the button to the morphine pump again. Your family is standing around your bedside. Well, your wife is sitting since she can't stand long with her COPD. Oh, and your child comes and goes since there's no smoking allowed in the hospital.
Your family decides on a grave side service for you since it has to be a closed casket ceremony. Plus, that way they can smoke as soon as it's over, but at least they're happy.
Are you happy, Nicholas? It doesn't have to be that way...for any of you.
Nurse Nan
