Get it out the way ...... best thing to do. If you haven't read last nights blog (Happy Birthday) it isn't going to make sense why I've done this one, but here goes ......
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My dad smoked for at least 30 years before I was born. He'd given up once before but because he put on a bit of weight after he stopped and couldn't shift it, decided smoking was the lesser of 2 evils. Bear in mind this was back in the day, when smoking was overwhelmingly acceptable and the risks weren't necessarily well known. When he found out my Mum was expecting me he gave up. I don't know if it was easy, I don't know how he did it, all I know is for the next 24 years a cigarette never touched his lips.
He first developed a problem when I was about 8. I'm not sure how it came up but I do remember him spending a couple of nights in hospital having tests. He was diagnosed with a shadow on his lung, later identified as Bronchitis. His condition got worse when he started working in a furniture factory. The dust from the saws coupled with the fact that 2 of his passions were woodwork and our aviary of budgies, and the dust inherently generated by those passions, was a major contributing factor. We didn't think any more about it until a few years later when he became poorlier. Mum and Dad didn't tell me at the time but he had been diagnosed with emphacaema and over the next few years it got worse still.
His condition worsened while I was at college and uni. Those last 5 years were the worst. He gradually became so poorly that he couldn't sit up on the sofa or get out into the garden (another passion) any more because of his breathing difficulties. He had twice-weekly visits with the district nurses (who, might I add, were absolutely fabulous and supportive). He was on various pills, inhalers and nebulisers. I'd say he rattled when he walked, if he had had enough lung capacity to walk anywhere. He became so poorly, that he became bed-ridden .He was fitted with a catheter and had to be changed like a baby, because he couldn't even walk to the toilet. He also struggled to eat, as he couldn't take in enough oxygen to chew his food. He was surviving on mashed potato and cauliflower cheese – not the best of diets but it didn't need as much chewing.
He got into such a state that he became incredibly irritable and moody because he couldn't look after himself anymore, he was a very proud man, and took his frustration out on me and Mum – sometimes he would just say that he wished he were dead, and that hurt the most. I understood what he meant though. He had no quality of life and did nothing but lie in bed all day, watching old John Wayne flicks, get routinely medicated, and struggle to draw breath. That was his life for 5 years. On the morning of 28 December 2003 he was admitted to Hull Royal Infirmary because Mum couldn't rouse him from his sleep for his medication. He seemed completely unaware of where he was and what was happening and he never left. He passed away due to emphacaema complicated by a viral lung infection at 12.00pm the following day, 29 December 2003. Mum was there. I wasn't. I was feeding the parking meter. She said it was almost like he was waiting for me to leave the room after he saw me that last time. For a while I blamed myself, as I had a bad cold that Xmas and spent most of it in bed feeling like s****. We'd always been careful about colds and the like because of the effect they would have had on Dad. I knew in my head that it wasn't my fault, but my heart kept with its what-if's.
It was a very long and drawn out death. He started dying five years before his body finally gave out on him, and there was no way to stop it. It sounds mean but I was glad when it ended. Finally my Dad could be at peace and not have to suffer any more. It still hurts today. It's something that has yet to go away. Sometimes it just sneaks up on me and I find myself bursting into tears for no apparent reason, or I'll be somewhere and think 'Dad would've liked this' or 'Dad'll never see this' and I'll be a gonner. I even missed my cousins wedding because I just knew I'd spend the entire trip thinking 'If the chance ever comes up my dad will never see me get married' and bursting into tears at the slightest thing – wasn't going to do that on her special day!!
That is why I hate smoking, not because as a habit it doesn't and never has appealed, but because I've seen and experienced first hand the effect it can have, not only on the individual affected, but also on those around them too.
Sorry if I sound preachy but that is my view, gleaned through frightening experience that I sincerely hope people don't have to witness ...... but I know someone somewhere undoubtedly will and I pity that person ......
So that's my therapy for a while. I hope you understand now why I get down sometimes for no apparent reason -- it isn't always work-related, some of it does run much deeper. You know I'm not generally a big sharer, but I felt, as my very good friends, that you deserved to know a little bit more about where I'm coming from.
H.
xx
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