Put the cigarette down

I'm probably going to step on some people's toes by the time I'm finished, but I'm sick and tired of walking around every corner just to see a group of two or three people puffing away on their favorite cigarette. The most depressing thing is that the majority of the smokers are my co-workers, the so-called "healthcare professionals." How can we, as doctors, nurses, and the like, promote a healthy lifestyle to our patients who are dying from lung cancer or dealing with COPD and emphysema when we participate in the same nasty habits as them?

I'm not really sure what it's going to take. The numbers continue to rise, the cancer diagnoses continue to skyrocket, and eventually the mortality age is going to start to drop instead of increase. Young America will probably die at a younger age than our parents because of the obesity crisis and the unfathomable things we are injecting and inhaling into our bodies.

We live in an addictive society. Everyone has their one or two "things" that they just can't live without: alcohol, caffeine, cocaine, marijuana, magazines, shoes, shopping, cigarettes, blah, blah, blah. I'm trying to figure out where the line is. Do we just keep erasing it and re-drawing over and over again to satisfy whatever we allegedly "need"?

I walked into a patient's room who had been coughing up blood for the past two days and I completed my history and physical. I answered any questions that he had and did a little bit of teaching about smoking cessation. Of course, his pack per year figure was astronomical, I had to re-calculate it just to make sure I didn't make a mistake. I can't even imagine what coughing up blood may feel like, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that it's not too pleasant. As I was walking towards the door, he asked me if he could walk outside to have a cigarette. Now, I'm not on some crusade to change every smoker in the world, but it blows me away when people continually kill themselves in the slowest way possible when they have every opportunity to quit.

Now, I'm not perfect. I have my faults and I have my certain "thing" that I just can't live without, but I make sure that it isn't something that will cut my life in half or that will prevent me from watching my children graduate from college or get married.

I know what their argument is: I'm stressed; It feels good; I only have one life to live and I'm going to do it the way I want. Well, I can't take that away from anyone, their life is theirs to live it however they would like. But, I ask you this, when you're 55 and you're lying in a hospital bed with a basin underneath your chin because you keep coughing up blood every two minutes, are you going to ask me permission to smoke a cigarette or are you going to ask me how to make it to your 56th birthday?

Make a choice.