Patrick Swayze in hosp with pneumonia

[kuhio98]

Looks like I'm in the minority. After watching my father die an early death partly due to smoking -- and watching my sister continue to smoke after being diagnosed with emphysema -- I have become very intollerant.

I once read that doctors estimated each cigarette shortens your life by 7 minutes. Each time I see my sister light up, it feels like a knife in my heart.

Patrick Swayze is a very brave and strong person to fight this disease. I just wish he would incorporate non-smoking into his treatment. Those last 7, 14, 21.... minutes of life, could be very important. I know it will be for those who love him.

[Daisy and Delilah]

I have to agree with you, Lisa. If I'm not mistaken, I thought he mentioned something about the smoking being totally destructive with his cancer. I was really surprised when he said he was still smoking. At the same time, he's doing such a meticulous job at being healthy in his effort to conquer the disease. He seems to be doing everything to keep on living so why not drop the cigarettes?

[Medusa]

Looks like I'm in the minority. After watching my father die an early death partly due to smoking -- and watching my sister continue to smoke after being diagnosed with emphysema -- I have become very intollerant.

I once read that doctors estimated each cigarette shortens your life by 7 minutes. Each time I see my sister light up, it feels like a knife in my heart.

Patrick Swayze is a very brave and strong person to fight this disease. I just wish he would incorporate non-smoking into his treatment. Those last 7, 14, 21.... minutes of life, could be very important. I know it will be for those who love him.

I agree w/you in theory but knowing the smokers in my life, both past and present, they would argue otherwise. I've never been able to get the point across to any of them that, aside from second hand smoke, their smoking affects us, too. Also, anyone who has ever taken care of someone w/emphysema such as my sister did for her husband for 30 years, the unfairness of it all is maddening. My BIL felt that he had the "right" to smoke but he never considered my sister's decreased quality of life while she took care of him all those years. Another sister smoked all her life and when she developed an aortic aneurysm and had 26 surgeries w/in a 2 1/2 month period, she never considered the pain that she was causing her kids and the rest of her family. When she died at the young age of 56, not one of us thought "Well, I'm glad she got to exercise her "right" to smoke." We all felt cheated of our sister/mother/friend. We fight for our addictions be they cigarettes, drugs, food, shopping, relationships, whatever. We justify them for our own selfish reasons, and so when someone has already been handed a death sentence, to insist that he stop smoking and thereby add to his stress and to the stress of those closest to him, seems pointless to me.