Me and Mx Cig.

My job causes me pain. Here’s what it’s like on my end to see suffering on yours and feel I have little to offer. I understand we make our own choices. Even Dr. Elisabeth Kubler Ross, who wrote about facing death, discussed her decision to smoke. But…. wouldn’t it be great to get what we need without using things that weaken us?

Before I go on, check out this one minute video link below of David Goerlitz, former Winston model. I met Dave after his presentation in Maine the summer of my first year of medical school. He is no longer with us, but his bravery and tell it like it is attitude is powerful. His has videos online and was featured in two movies: A Billion Lives (released 2016) and The David Goerlitz Story (released 2019).

Dave Goerlitz Video (It’s quiet and rumbly, so increase the volume in advance): https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DtJrCSlbkNkw&ved=2ahUKEwjJ3e_h1f6EAxUakIkEHQIlAm8QtwJ6BAgHEAI&usg=AOvVaw1P1QpO_mqWctRq28cWus9Q

Smoking may not immediately kill, but can make you suffer for years. Patients tell me they didn’t realize how often they hacked up loogies (not sexy), smelled of old tobacco or how fatigued they were until after stopping. I firmly believe that anyone can get addicted to any drug and am grateful to my brother for unintentionally discouraging me from cigarettes and in my case, by it’s association, all drugs.

One California summer, my older brother and I walked the short distance from our home to the neighborhood park. We were ages 11 and 9. After lighting the cigarette he’d brought and began coughing, I panicked. I thought he might die or we’d get into ” big trouble.” I remember being curious but afraid of the bad, bad, bad cigarette we’d been warned about in school. Neither of us picked up one again. I sometimes feel like the nutty guy in horror movies, glancing sideways and warning: I wouldn’t go in there if I were you… I wish I could summarize everything I’ve seen into one indelible story that would relay the fullness of this suffering. But I can’t so I’ll leave you with one.

30 years ago, I met a woman looking older than her years sitting stiffly upright in a hospital bed with a look of severe distress on her face at the meal set before her. She’d undergone surgery to remove a portion of her diseased lungs from years of tobacco use and could barely breath. She looked down and kept quietly repeating: “this is too much.” I offered to move a portion of food off her tray, she nodded her assent then visibly relaxed. Everything was hard for her: breathing, holding that breath for the tiny fraction she needed to swallow or trying to rest. There was no ease in her life.

Human bodies tell a story and there is beauty in their journeys. But there also can be heartache within that beauty. Over the years, I’ve been struck by the facial changes I’ve seen in long-time smokers. Some remind me of those whose hands became discolored working hard with grease and machines all their lives. My patients’ faces remind me of the beauty that can exist within the pain.

The Road Home

The long days stretch behind those heavy eyes

The creased cheeks are thickened and full with

lines of black, dotted freckles marching in rows

The years of scrubbing can’t clean this skin

The marks are like work hands stained from

years of labor that are finally released to rest

It is a long way to the road home

It is a long way to the road home.

Let there be some ease even in times of pain,

Dr. Valerie