[Ipg-smz] Looking for opinions/experience

[Stephen Satchell]

On 11/14/19 11:06 AM, Christine Hall via Ipg-smz wrote:
> My mother smoked until the day she died, a couple of months back at 87. 
> The last couple of years she could barely breath, was hooked up to 
> oxygen most of the time, but puffing away every time she could get her 
> hands on a cigarette.

My mother, a Southern Belle from the great State of North Carolina, grew 
up in Winston-Salem.  Daughter of a fire-chief dad and an orthodontist 
mom.  Trained to be a dietitian, then when WWII broke out she joined up 
and was stationed in a Santa Fe hospital, where my dad was sent after 
getting shot up in France.  Yep.  Married there.

Clara Louise took up the smoking habit fairly early in her life, and was 
a two-pack a day smoker when I came along.

Back to Santa Fe:  at the wedding, my mom slipped on the rice and landed 
on her knees.  This started a gradual breakdown of her right knee to the 
point that a knee replacement was needed.  This was still considered 
experimental surgury at the time.  Seven years later, the second knee 
got replaced.

(Now we get to the buried lead.)  Mom's last cigarette was just before 
she got in the car to go to the hospital.  Quit cold turkey.  NEVER 
caught her sneaking one after she came home; she even had to leave the 
room when Dad lit up.

After my father died (hospital infection) she sold everything and moved 
into a no-smoking nursing home in Pennsylvania, where she spent her last 
12 years of her life.  Met her grandkids, as my brother and his family 
was just across the state line and visited her regularly.

She could never kick the "As The World Turns" habit, but the smokes went 
right out.