My wife is a retired public health and visiting nurse. She has practiced her profession for more than 20 years here in US and knows the health hazard of cigarettes. In her nursing career as a public health nurse, she had visited patients in their homes who are dying of lung cancer due to smoking. But she would not quit smoking or may be just can not stop the habit. I had tried every incentive to help her quit smoking. I even enrolled her to a smoking cessation clinic offered by my employer in the mid 1990's. She quit for six weeks after the clinic, but went back to smoking again. She has tried quitting twice, but the power of nicotine addiction is just too hard to break. I tried to bribe her, a vacation to Aruba and to Cancun, but she is still smoking today. I tried to nag her, but it does not work and so I finally give up. As a result of smoking, she acts much much older than her chronological age. She is only 75 but is physically weaker than her 87 year old aunt in the Philippines. So based on statistics, I will be lucky, if she survives until she reached 80 years old. I just pray to God that both of us reached our mid 80's to see and attend our youngest grand daughter high school graduation. May be if we are lucky, we could both attend her college graduation. I do not smoke, but have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and adult unset diabetes. Thanks God, these three diseases are under control by medication. I still drive, garden a little bit and could still squat and walk really fast if I want to. Macrine needs a wheel chair when we travel to the Philippines annually during our snow bird sojourn. But I guess she is happy when she smokes, so I stopped nagging her to quit. After all its her body she is poisoning and not mine. I just made it sure, I do not breath second hand smoke, by not allowing her to smoke inside the house or near me. She started smoking in the mid 1980's while she was in nursing school. I believe she consumes half a pack per day( not sure of this). If you are a teenager reading this, please do not start smoking. Once you are hooked, it is addiction that is very hard to break!
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