Stop Smoking Support Thread
Comments
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LisaMarie - So sorry your life is full of lemons. You can make it even it it looks like the dark clouds will swamp you. I lost both first & second husbands due to divorce and didn't want to give up my dreams. But... I'm fortunate neither were abusive. Just not interested in participating in a relationship & one wanted outside excitement. I did have one BF who was insanely jealous - even of my girl friends - and I got out of that when it looked like he was turning into a "hitter" - not to mention the verbal abuse. Trust me - I know it's hard to leave when you still love that person. And on, and on, and on...
Drove 60miles each way today to see BFF who i don't see much anymore - mainly due to distance. Her husband had pancreatic AND esophageal cancer. He's 5 years out, but on a feeding tube & not doing well. They were high school sweethearts and it was a true cinderella story for over 50 years. They did everything together. Now he won't even try to communicate. My heart breaks for her since she's giving everything and he's become a professional who "has cancer" (and we all know that story & how easy that could be). He says he doesn't want to give up but he keeps letting her do everything and he just sits, even though he's NED. I wish I could help her but I don't have anyone to go to the movies with either. I just learned long ago to go & do rather than sit home When I go out to eat, I take a book and am perfectly happy. Or I go with girlfriends and I have lots of those for the first time in my life.
Sounds like maybe he's attacking because you're trying to quit smoking?
Hope you can see a ray of sunshine tomorrow.
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Whenever I've gone through tough times I always remember what Mother Teresa said---God never hands you more than you can handle, I just wish he wouldn't trust me so much.
What I see going on LisaMarie is that you are going through two major changes (going smoke-free and maybe going BF-free) and the psychological elements are very similar.
Of course you love your BF (& your cigarettes) there are both good and not-so good aspects of every person (and to smoking). So it is a matter of whether you love yourself more to be able to leave a BF or cigarettes which have more not-so-good aspects than good. But that brings up many different fears---He (& the smokes) stuck by me through BC, will anyone else be there for me in the same way? Am I strong enough to face the world (without BF or smokes)? Am I better off (alone without BF/ without smoking as coping mechanism)? The comparisons just go on and on.
Our brains are always looking to maintain the status quo but the world is full of chaos and change. Nothing in this world remains the same forever. It is in our ability to adapt and be resilient amid the chaos that will dictate whether the transition is fraught with anxiety, and fear or whether change will inspire hopefulness and excitement as to what the future will bring. I have been on both sides of those emotions.
Only you can decide what is best for you AT THIS MOMENT. Reserve the right to change your mind at any time in the future as circumstances change.
At the lowest point in my life when I was seriously thinking about whether it was worth it to go on or end it now, I was therapist-hopping, trying to find someone to give me the answer to what would make me happy and make it worthwhile to go on. The last therapist was a free one at some religious center and when I walked out, I thought, she was nuts. What she was suggesting I do was really bad advice--for me. I made the decision that day that only I could decide what would make me happy. I took one thing at a time. I needed a place to live and I put my entire focus on solving that one problem until I had a place to stay. The next step was I needed a job and I had laser focus on that next. I rebuild my entire life one step at a time. The place to live wasn't perfect, nor was the job but it was good enough at the time. Each day I would concentrate on just one issue--whatever was most important at that moment. What I believed was that things just had to get better and if they didn't suicide was still an option but I would give it my all to change my world for the better first. I had to believe that I was strong enough to weather any storm. And I believe that you, LisaMarie are strong enough too and that as you listen to that small still voice inside you will find the strength to do what you need to do--just for today to make your world a little bit better place, just for today. Good luck, VJ
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LisaMarie - sending more hugs today. Check in when you can.
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Ladies ... this has been a heart wrenching read to these posts. I think we have all experienced the same ups and downs and VJ has hit it on the nail. LisaMarie, reread Vj's and MinusTwo's posts .... both full of support and knowledge. It's the hardest think to do but no man should every verbally or physically abuse a women. Think about a shelter until life improves for you. Bosum and LisaMarie, giving up smokes when you are going through tough times is so hard .... I admire the courage of both of you because it never entered my mind to do so until I got cancer. Keep your spirits up ladies!
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BTW, Jeaniebeni ... welcome to the group. Wheather you smoke or not, we are all in this together. On the weekend, I got out of the car and decided I wanted a smoke. Told me sister and she said are you nuts. Yup, I was nuts but the thoughts go in and out of my mind and hard to control but I haven't given in.
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Judi - and we won't!!! but... I was with a friend at a little theater play this weekend. We went outside at intermission since I was freezing, but I immediately thought of having a smoke. She (who had never even considered smoking in her entire life) laughed and said she remembered the days when she went outside w/me. We've been friends for 41 years so she's seen it all. But those flash moments don't last, and that's all they are - a quick memory & not real cravings.
Just for today I will not smoke.
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No WE WON'T!
Lisamarie, my heart goes out to you. I know how hard it is to leave a relationship, even when we know how toxic it is to us. HUGS! Wish I could help but we are flat broke! Keeping you in my thoughts.
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Thanks to everyone .. VJ and Minus .. you guys are so much help .. I don't want to sound like I need help . cash wise .. I am ok .. money is not evrything ... I do appreciate the warm thoughts . I just need the support and to vent . if anyone can understand that . I feel bad letting everyone know my buisness . I dont know where to turn ..
xoxoxo
Lisamarie
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lisamarie, I know that you did not wish to come off as asking for money. I would just want to GIVE you some to help you get a place if I could afford to but if wishes were pennies, then we would not have this conversation at all..lol
I know that feeling of helplessness and no where to turn when I wanted to get out of a verbally abusive marriage to a severe alcoholic.
What I want you to know my dear friend is that there really ARE great men out there who treat women the way we should be. I know because I met one and being the smart woman that I am, I married him going on 7 years ago. I finally realized that I should not put up with being called a c%$t or any other horrible name.
Love and hugs and NEVER think you are bothering us because you aren't. We care about you!
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April , I know .. I am sorry I guess I am so defensive these days ... I just want a normal loving life someday .... hugs to you .. you have been such an inspiration to me as well as everyone here .. xoxoxoxo
Lisamarie
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LisaMarie - ditto what April said. We're here to listen whenever you need to vent. Life's a bitch and this very valuable sounding board helps us all when we are in need - whether it's about smoking or cancer or parents or children or hurricanes or men. Never be feel bad about reaching out. We all just wish we could do more, but at least we'll be here to listen and never to judge. I hope you feel our hugs.
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Oh Lisa...I wish I was in NY so I could help. You sound a bit like me, you might need someone to just "take over" and help you, whether you're asking or not. Don't worry about stopping smoking right now (except for having to pay for the cigarettes, of course)-this thread has taken a much more serious turn. I wish I could direct you, but I have no knowledge of the type of aid you can get in NY. Can anyone else (in NY) provide a phone number to a social worker who can help Lisa with a place to stay so she can settle for a minute and focus?
I will tell you this, having taken a domestic violence class this past year really did nothing to teach me how to handle these matters. It takes someone who is in tune to your local surroundings. But I was orphaned at age 5 when my mother paid the ultimate price for trying to raise her children away from a man who had no respect for anyone but himself. So please take care of yourself first. Find a safe place and FROM there you can branch out to handle the problems. You need to know you have a roof, a place to come home to at the end of the day, people who care and will return your calls for assistance, etc.
If you cannot get your things, and you know of a shelter to go to - go NOW. They will advise you how to make a plan to get your things. I hate to say it but the time one leaves is the most dangerous. So don't attempt to go back to get them. I've done a lot of work with shelters and I know they have clothes and toiletries. They may be able to go back with a policeman, or send you with a police escort, and get your things. But remember those are THINGS (although that's easy to say, but harder to deal with when you're in a bad place financially).
ONE thing at a time. Get a SAFE place to sleep tonight. THEN worry about the details of living beyond that step. Wish you were in the Midwest so I could help more.
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Oh you smart, loving, wonderful ladies ..... I am so glad I found all of you. We all been through hell and back but are still there to offer support to a wonderful friend. LisaMarie, think wisely right now .... take what all of these women are telling you .... they have lived through experience. I too was in a toxic relationship prior to meeting dh .... I truly was in love and would give this man anything .... to a tune of $3000 plus, food, whatever. I had huge credit card debt because of him. I was just a tool for him. He was abusive to his ex but not with me because I think we weren't living together but he treated me like crap. I just couldn't get enough. It wasn't until I said I need to stand tall and was now with my dh that I was able to cut him off. He then said to me that he could harm me - I told him to go ahead because I wasn't scared. He walked away because I think he knew that I truly wasn't scared and had enough of him. I thank the Lord every day for allowing me to do this. Never looked back and been with dh for 16 years. LisaMarie, vent all you want but in the end you know that if you need anyone of us, were there for you.
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LisaMarie - just in case you need one more hug today before I head to bed. ((((hugs))))
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is it really true that nicotine reduces chemo effectiveness? Has anyone spoken with their Onc about this? I did read the study linked but it's hard to believe some oncs would let patients smoke through chemo as to not add more stress if it actually reduced how the chemo would work. Just wondering.
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Windgirl - I know it's true that nicotine reduces the body's ability to heal after surgery - particularly the skin. Like everything else about this disease, it may depend on the individual kind of BC and what drugs you're taking. I expect VR may know more about the chemo stats.
lisaMarie - hoping things are OK
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well day 3 of not smoking AGAIN,,,,,I do not even have any hidden around the house,,,lol,,, I figure if I have to go to the store to buy them I can probably talk myself out of it by then,,,, but it is all I can think about!!!!! I want that first drag,,,,, ugh!!!! I think I will go make breakfast instead,,,,
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Hi everyone still here... Ty again for the continued support and love ... I am down to maybe 5 smokes a day ... fighting the fight ... CONGRATS Jeaniebeanie ... yeah for you ...Minus the hugs are awesome .... xoxoxo
Lisamarie
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lisamarie,, thanks but not sure I am going to make it all day,,,,, I still have time before my surgery,, still 2 weeks away,,, maybe I can do it when it is 1 week away???? Ugh, I don't know !!!!
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Jeanie Beanie .... 3 days is amazing ,.......xoxooxoxoxox
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jeanie - it's easier to keep going than to start over. I know that sounds counter intuitive, but in the long run it's true. Even though we all know it's a royal bitch!!! Have you heard our unofficial motto? Just For Today I Will Not Smoke. Hope you can make it to day 4. No judges here!!!
Bosum - yes I too have been told that smoking isn't a cause of breast cancer, but everything else - katie bar the door. Now drinking... Hmmm. Guess it's too early for a glass of wine? I did have to give up drinking for awhile after i quit smoking. And coffee. And reading the morning paper. Too many triggers.
And that's a major part of the solution. Figure out your 'triggers' and find a temporary way around them. Also easier said than done but I wrote them down & it really helped me. Every time I wanted a smoke I ran out the door and walked around the block. I might as well have slept in my sneakers. I got so darn healthy I got breast cancer (little light levity here, but still true).
LisaMarie - 5 smokes is a good accomplishment considering everything else you have going on. Check in when you can. We're all holding you close.
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Yes, smoking may reduce the effectiveness of chemo, depends on the drug you are taking. Most oncologists are NOT tobacco treatment experts. They have no clue. This is from the American Cancer Society, doctors blog that says many cancer patients are not told about the effect of smoking and treatment:
http://www.cancer.org/aboutus/drlensblog/post/2009...
Nicotine interferes with the absorption of many medications (including caffeine). I don't have a study right at hand but I just read this yesterday--see graphic on page 17--this is the annual report from the American Assn of Cancer Research and has a section on tobacco.
http://cancerprogressreport.org/2014/Documents/AA...
The old studies didn't find a relationship between BC and smoking BUT the latest studies are showing a connection in a subset of some women---ones who have never had children and smoking as a teen. The components of smoke have been shown to be in breast tissue and in breast milk, so we know that the chemicals in smoke travel to the breast.
In some women, smoking is protective against BC because it lowers estrogen. In others (like me), it can double your risk of getting BC. The theory is that the breast goes through many changes. When you are born, not much is there, in puberty the breast changes and when you are pregnant/breast feeding, there are more breast changes. I've never had children, so the theory is that the harmful components of smoke may change the breast tissue that has not gone through the changes of pregnancy/breast feeding. For women with no children and is around a lot of 2nd smoke, the risk is 1.75 higher.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24420985 This is only the abstract but I have heard Stanton Glanz at some tobacco conference and because of my BC history, I paid attention.
here is another abstract stating the same thing:
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dang it,, I did make it,,, got some company who smokes and I asked for one,, then went to store on the way to bus stop!!!! Ugh,,, that's ok,,, I only had 2,,,, going to keep trying not to smoke.
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Don't look at how many you did smoke, but how many you didn't smoke but what did you do with the rest of the pack? Don't let them stay around "just in case". If they are there you will eventually smoke them too.
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Hello ladies .... wish there was a like button on these posts because I like them all. Keep going ladies ... you can do it. VJ I loved your post. Like you I didn't have children but often wondered if my smoking (I started at 13) did cause my breast cancer. Hmmmmm.
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Thanks JudiH. I should mention that the reason why they think they didn't find a connection between smoking and BC in the past was due to secondhand smoke being everywhere (almost as dangerous as smoking 1.75x to 2.0x risk), so women exposed to 2nd smoke were lumped together with non-smokers. And they lumped all women together instead of looking at subsets of woman-such as JudiH and I --who haven't had children.
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VJ - most interesting. Thanks for the info. I've joked that as long as I was smoking I didn't have cancer. Once I quit smoking and started exercising 5 days a week & eating healthy - bam - breast cancer. My theory has always been that the poisons in the cigarettes kept the breast cancer from growing - since I've had very dense, fibrous breasts all my life - 67 years before BC. Maybe not so far off. However I did have a child & I did nurse & I am not ER/PR positive. So many different subsets to consider.
Read a paragraph in Women magazine that "the risk of dying from breast cancer increases with bra cup size." Seems like an unbelievably stupid comment. I definitely plan to write to the editors since that kind of broad statement makes no sense at all.
LisaMarie - Thursday hugs!!!
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To all those trying to quit, best wishes and we hope you can get on top of the challenge. It is not easy to give up something so addictive at such a stressful time of your lives. It is a huge challenge and we can but wish you success or at least a decrease in use.
We like the statement above by VJ of "Don't look at how many you did smoke, but how many you didn't smoke" as that is a good start.
On our main site are a number of articles, one of which is Does smoking affect the immune system?
All the best in the challenge
The Mods
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"Reducing stress is about the only thing that smoking is good for,....." From the post, "Does smoking affect the immune system.
I have to disagree with this statement. unless you add in the words, " Reducing stress FROM WITHDRAWALS is about the only thing that smoking is good for.
When smokers say that smoking relieves stress what they are talking about is that when the blood level of nicotine drops in the body, a smoker will start to go through withdrawals, as soon as they smoke, the withdrawals stop. The physical withdrawal symptoms are perceived by a smoker as "stress".
In fact once the physical withdrawals are over (can be a few days or months), studies show that the stress levels in former smokers goes down.
Unfortunately when a former smoker experiences extreme stress, they may not have developed new coping skills and will turn to a cigarette--not expecting to go back to full time smoking but "just one to get over the stress". But nicotine is so addictive and the brain likes it so much that having one is a path back to a full pack (You're a puff away from a pack a day).
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BosumBlues--I have to agree with you. Smoking affects many different body parts and the development of many different disease BUT it doesn't affect everybodys body the same way. Some people get cancer, others get heart disease, a stroke or COPD.
What I think smoking does is it finds the weakest link in a individual smokers body--it could be their lungs, heart, etc.....but rarely does smoking affect every part of a smokers body to the same extent. I have meet many smokers that had multiple issues but never someone who had cancer of every organ that smoking affects plus heart, blood vessels, copd etc all at the same time.
We can never know exactly how smoking affects us as individuals because it is impossible to compare our body as a smoker to the way it would have been if we had never smoked. So while your immune system may not have been compromised to the extent as it affects other smokers, you can't know that it didn't do any damage.
Just the same I can never know whether my smoking contributed to my first cancer or not. After all it did come back 23 years later when I had been a non-smoker for over 20 years. I have to feel that my immune system was compromised when it did, otherwise the cancer wouldn't have come back--but my compromised immune system wasn't caused by smoking. I had my vit. D levels checked recently and it's the first time they have ever been out of the 20's (41). I have often wondered about the connection between our immune system and vit. D levels.
When I did my Masters degree, one of the classes I took was Psychosocial Immunology. It was a study in how our psychological and social aspects interact with our immune system and how the immune system can affect our psychological and social well-being. It is an interesting but complex subject. Our environment is so complex that it is hard to pinpoint just one thing that affects our immune system, could be and most likely it is a combination of things, a perfect storm.
I think all we can wish for is to take care of ourselves as best we can, just for today. I am a work in progress trying to be as healthy as I can but as always far from perfect.
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