by Barbara Lee Norris

Created on: January 31, 2007   Last Updated: May 29, 2010

Looking for that magic bullet to make smoking cessation easier? All the classes, support groups, nicotine replacement products, lectures from family members, bags of hard candy and gum, and whatever else that's on the market, is ineffective unless the smoker is truly motivated to quit. My husband will attest to that. He smoked for thirty-five years and loved everything about it: the feel of a cigarette between his fingers, the smell of tobacco, lighting up, and that first drag that seemed to make life so much sweeter. Even though his breathing became labored and coughing more intense, he lit up. Nothing convinced him to quit, until the afternoon he realized his life was in danger.

He came home from work, poured himself a cup of coffee, sat in his favorite chair, and lit a cigarette. While watching the news, he noticed that the words on one side of the television screen disappeared. Blinking and rubbing his eyes didn't bring them back. Within minutes the symptoms subsided. At that point, he took another drag on a cigarette. The symptoms  immediately returned and were more intense. Walking made him feel dizzy, and he experienced tunnel vision. We called his doctor and rushed to the emergency room.

To make a long story short, he experienced a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA), a mini-stroke. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a TIA lasts only a few minutes. It occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is briefly interrupted. Symptoms may include numbness or weakness in the face, arm, or leg. One side of the body is usually affected. Sufferers may experience confusion or difficulty in talking or understanding speech, trouble seeing in one or both eyes, and difficulty with walking, dizziness, or loss of balance or coordination.

His doctors told him that a TIA is often a predictor of a future massive stroke. They said continued smoking would dramatically up the odds of that happening to him. My husband remained in the hospital twenty-four hours, suffered through the lectures of several judgmental doctors, and went home the next day with strict orders to quit.

He hasn't had another cigarette since then. The memory of that last drag making symptoms worse, coupled with the threat of a massive stroke, quite frankly, scared the smokes right out of his pocket.

He tried nicotine gum, a nicotine pipe, and finally patches. He liked the patches the best. He said the gum and the pipe were too much like smoking; he thought about them too much. He applied a patch a day. (He purchased Walgreen's brand for half the price of name brand patches). He said that cravings subsided after a few minutes so he'd wait them out. He used the patches for 30 days, and then went "cold turkey."

Two years have passed. It hasn't been easy, but it gets easier every day. He still misses the cigarettes, but not so much that he is willing to sacrifice his life for them.

It's so much better to quit before a trip to the hospital and the threat of a catastrophic illness.Life gave my husband  a warning before a massive stroke wrecked his life, and mine. Not everyone gets that chance.

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