Day 75
I just found out today that my 50 year old brother's throat cancer has come back with a vengeance. He now has a trach. He has a tumor growing on his cardioid artery, which the doctors don't have any way to treat. A max of 5 years is what they give him. 5 years lived more like a sentence than a life....Indeed a sad day for me. He was a smoker for the last 36 years or so. He was still smoking in Feb when I saw him, despite going through chemo and radiation. Reminded me of watching my mother smoking and then strapping the oxygen to her nose. The oxygen that she needed because of emphysema. As loot said the other day Addiction is a motherfucker. And while we are all responsible for ourselves, and nobody forces us to use nicotine, the fact is there is a pusher out there. That pusher doesn't give a damn about the lives, the misery, the destroyed families. Doesn't care about widows, or orphans. Doesn't care about cancer. Doesn't care about someone who will never be able to talk again. Doesn't care that I lost my mother when she was 54. A slow death by asphyxiation. Or that I will probably loose my brother by the time he is 54. Doesn't care that he will have surgery after surgery. Doesn't care that my father has to watch his son in so much misery just like he watched his wife of 35 years. It's enough to break even the strongest of men - and it has.
That pusher only cares to keep you addicted. So the pusher can make money. I am ANGRY. I HATE THE PUSHER, There is no justice. There is no revenge to be had except this: The only thing I can do to get even is to stay quit. And help you do the same.
I'll be back here tomorrow. And my mission has more resolve than it ever has. God help big tobacco.
I just got the sad news that Hospice has been called in for my brother. It is going to be a sad Christmas...not much to say except I am filled with sorrow. He is now 51 and it is unlikely that he will see 52.
My brother makes the third person in my family that has been murdered by big tobacco
Grandfather- emphysema
Mother - emphysema
Brother- Throat Cancer
Stay Quit.
Rest in Peace Keith
1960-2011
Happy 55th Keith and happy Mothers Day, Mom. Thinking of you both today.
Nicotine has taken way too much from us. It feels really good to take back as much as we can. Few on this site have done that better than you. You have built a solid quit of accountability and brotherhood and led many of us, who were lost and scared, to the same freedom.
Nicotine is a wicked monster. What it steals and how it steals is no better than crack or meth. But today your bro and mom are smiling at how you have harnessed something that they couldn't. And saved a lot of other lives in the process.
Thank you sir for all that you do here.
What a powerful story. Thoughts and prayers are with you even so many years later. This is eye-opening as to the hatred that we all should have for the company(ies) that would do this to people for no other reason than to make money off of that misery.
My brother is currently on the tail end of cancer treatment (and God-willing he's done with it after that). It was not necessarily a chew-related cancer, but who knows. Nonetheless, he put down the can for awhile during the worst of the treatment, but now he's back at it. Quit drugs, started smoking. Quit smoking, started chewing. I pray everyday that he chooses his health and his family before something like what happened to your brother happens to him. Did I mention he's only 30 years old?
Thanks for posting this story, it has strengthened my resolve to never let nicotine take away the freedom that I am slowly earning back.
