My father inhaled his first cigarette at the age of nine, and he is now 53 years old. If you did the math correctly, that adds up to 44 years of smoking. At about 10-15 cigarettes a day, which adds up to 160,000 total cigarettes, can you imagine the weight of tar that has added up over the years? I can, and I witness the effects it has on my father every day. Although he knows this disease will most likely be the cause of his death, he has found ways to cope. In the beginning months of his symptoms, before he was diagnosed, he completely denied that he had a problem. He refused to quit. After the diagnosis, he began to slow down from 13 cigarettes a day to 8. He called 1-800-QUITNOW and received patches, but he was not satisfied. He became scared. He was not ready to quit, but he knew he did not have a choice. Now, in the fifth month, he has switched to chewing tobacco. Even though he smoked his last cigarette on the morning of September 5th, and it has only been a few weeks, I hope he keeps on track. After 44 years of smoking, I am sure it is extremely hard for him to quit this addiction, but I know his life span will be further extended if he quits now. After seeing how he suffers through this, my mother and I have learned quite a bit about how to take care of ourselves. My family is a smoking chain. My mother, father and I all have a smoking problem. It is a terrible habit that I never should have started, but I thought it was cool back then. My best friend, best friend’s boyfriend, and my boyfriend all smoked, so I figured “why not?” It looked cool. Now, it is not so cool. After hearing of my father’s diagnosis, it hit me hard. Why am I smoking? Why did I ever start? I quit …show more content…
He went from smoking more than half a pack a day to not at all. Even though it has not been very long since his last cigarette, I am very proud of him. However, the two things I wish he would have done differently are take his disease seriously and quit tobacco completely. In the first two months of his diagnosis, he did not take it as seriously as I would have hoped he would. I now see why it was so difficult for him to come to the realization that he could die from this. Also, now instead of smoking, he chews. He looks at chewing as an alternative; I look at it as mouth cancer. I wish he would quit tobacco all