"A Cigarette ......what can a small cigarette do? Just try it once.How will you know how it feels like until you actually experience smoking once?" asked Jerry.
Tom took a look at the cigarette, it looked so tempting! Jerry had assured him that a puff or two would make him forget all the tensions from school. And girls liked guys who smoked! "But if it's so cool why did Mom warn me against it?" asked Tom .
By now Jerry was getting annoyed. He gave it a last shot, "Don't be such a baby! If it was so bad, all of us wouldn't have done it."
Tom thought , 'Big deal I try once and go home, Mom won't even know. And I am 13 now- a big boy! If I can go to school alone, I can do anything! Plus I dont want these bullies to laugh at me and call me a coward.'
So he held a cigarette in his hands. It had a fancy paper feel and was open from the other side . He could see some leaf like particles inside through the open end....
"Go ahead, try it" said Jerry. That was Tom's first cigarette.But not the last one..........
10 years later, Tom was smoking 2 packs a day! He was a healthy guy, except for the short lasting episodes of dry cough and a slight breathlessness. But who doesn't cough once or twice a day? He had a girlfriend, Lena - a wonderful girl. She loved him and liked him a lot except for his smoking. He didn't really understand why she kept bugging him about quitting. 'Why doesnt she understand that being a bussinessman is a stressful thing, I cant quit now.' - He thought .
Lena was a surgeon at the Princeton -Plainsborough University Hospital. She loved Tom. She had known him for quite some time now, and would have loved to settle down with him. But when he proposed last month, she said no . She wanted him to quit smoking, and was trying her level best . She had even registered him for rehab sessions in the university hospital -but he never went. She tried explaining to him what he was doing to himself and his body by smoking, how smoking would affect his future life.....but Tom never paid heed to her warnings. He always found reasons to puff on the cigarette.
What Tom didn't know was that a cigarette contains a lot of poisonous substances. A cigarette in Tom's hand actually contained all the toxic substances he encountered in his day-to-day life.
About seven years later, after Lena and Tom had settled down - they had a sweet little angel Michelle . The presence of Michelle made Lena forget her worries about Tom. Lena never succeded in making Tom quit. She talked to Micehlle and loved it when she started toddling . But Lena was always worried about Michelle, she didnt want her to be a passive smoker. It was bad enough that last month Tom's chest X-ray film had shown some emphysematous changes - his lungs had started giving up. She knew what it meant. Emphysema was irreversible. Tom's lungs had started lossing their normal structure. The air spaces had puffed up and were no more elastic. His lungs were not taking part in normal breathing - inflated like a baloon!
Just yesterday she had visited an autopsy at the hospitals Pathology department. When she inspected the body's lungs, she was horrified - Tom's lungs probably looked the same!
Meanwhile, Tom hadnt ceased smoking. He had been diagnosed with
"Chronic Bronchitis" which belongs to the group of "Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary diseases" ....the end result of which is lung failure. It wont be a long time before Tom would stop breathing on his own and need oxygenation. The amount of oxygen his lung provided his body was too less and decreasing progressively.
It was Michelles Graduation day! Lena was all happy, her baby angel was all grown up now!
She had succeded in keeping Mich away from the addictive smoking. Lena knew that addiciton may be a genetic problem. Tom smoked, so Mich might! But this time she had decided to fight it fiercely,'not my kid'.
Some months later, while walking to his car, Tom felt a very bad pain in his left leg. He had to stop walking and rest his left calf for a while before he could reach for the car door. "Well,I am getting old!" said Tom as he looked back at the distance that he hadwalked ....only 100 meters. After a minute or two he felt better and left for work.
About two weeks later, while walking from the bed to toilet, Tom hit his left toe. The injury was much severe that he had thought - he hadn't hit it that bad. The wound didnt heal and had ulcerated . Lena knew what was about to come up next.
They performed a Dopplerography of Tom's leg blood vessels. Lena explained him that a doppler will show them if the blood supply to the legs is proper, and the walls of the arteries and veins are changed. Lena saw the results and tears trickled down her cheeks.
" If only you would have listened to me you stupid man! Your smoking has occluded the blood supply to your foot. The toe is not healing because you have
Buerger's Disease. You came walking in here on you feet, but you will have to go home in a wheelchair! "
This week , they amputated Tom's left foot. They had decided to spare his foot and trim down only his left big toe, but soon they observed his 2nd toe had turned black - it was dead tissue. So they had to amputate the whole left foot because of the compromised blood supply. It was an irony that Lena was also on the surgical team for Toms foot amputation.
During the operation, when Lena saw the foot on a tray, she knew that this is just the beginning - sadly the disease will progressively compromise the blood supply and a number of amputations will follow. She had seen the life of patients after amputation and now it was her Tom in the same place.
When Tom regained consciousness after the surgery, he remembered Jerry and his first cigarette. If only this was a dream! He was really angry at himself. But he needed a cigarette to calm down. He needed a cigarette to fight the stressful situation his previous cigarettes had put him in! That moment Tom hated himself. He felt miserable. A small cigarette had succeded in making him a captive in his own life. A cigarette had made him a cripple.... both mentally and physically!
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