…and the croissant, the sea, the vanilla in ice cream, the soil after heavy rain; then in the evening still being able to smell the faintest scent of roses on my skin my morning shower – these are a few benefits of returning to being a non-smoker.
Some of you know this story, my story, but for those who do not…
I became a very reluctant born-again non-smoker in February 2009.
I had been unwell for some time. Actually, I had probably been decidedly ill for a long time, i.e. years. I was feeling that I was going to pass out rather often, coughing constantly, unable to sleep for more than two or three hours at a time, and perpetually feeling tired. Viruses had hit me very hard several times within the previous year.
I was ill again. Around 6:30 am on the Saturday, I found I was too weak to drive myself to the walk-in clinic. I struggled the three steps and few yards between my front door and my neighbour’s front door to leave a note in their letterbox. I struggled home and sat in my chair, unable to move. I had just about got to the point of thinking that if my neighbour did not see my note, there was nothing more I could do to keep alive when she knocked on my door.
Getting from the car into the clinic took me quite a while. I had to stop for breath every couple of steps. I still did not realise how ill I was until I became vaguely aware that the nurse looked concerned and was treating me as if I needed to be wrapped in cotton wool. She gave me antibiotics, cream for my cracked hands (my skin was in a bad state and had started to break apart), and suggested that I should go to hospital. I objected to the idea of hospital. The nurse said to have a think about it, and that she could arrange admission if I changed my mind. My neighbour said that she would keep an eye on me.
She took me home and then came to collect me to give me some soup in their kitchen. By that time, I realised that I was still deteriorating and that I had to go into hospital. My neighbours took me there. I was finding it difficult to understand what was going on by the time and had scarcely any breath to speak. They kept asking me the same set of questions. I did not tell them the truth to all questions because I was worried that they would keep me in hospital for more than a day. I doubt it made much difference.
They put an oxygen mask on me and connected me to a monitor. I was ill enough for doctors as well as nurses to keep checking my vital signs at frequent intervals through the night. They tested me for various things. They found I had virtually no white blood cells, had a very high temperature, that I was dehydrated and very oxygen-deprived. As the night progressed, I struggled to remember my name and that I was human. I had no concept of what a human was, just that I was “not alien” but “human.”
Eventually, the antibiotics started to begin to work, and the paracetemol started help lower my temperature. I think that there were pills and injections and gas masks of cool fog to breathe. They were satisfied that I had not had a heart attack or stroke or pulmonary embolism so, 24 hours after I had been admitted, they sent me to the heart and lung specialists over at another hospital. I was put in a ‘bay’ with about 6 other women.
I felt lost at first. I did not know their routine, their ward culture. It seemed incredibly scary to talk to the other patients. They seemed to be a settled community, residents who had been there for years. They knew the routines, knew how things worked there. Then it became busy as I was tested for this, that and the other and given pills and a nebuliser and probably an injection (I was just letting everything happen and did not take in all that was being done).
During the next few days, I got used to the routines, including constant hand sanitising. I had more tests. Now and then I was taken to other parts of the building for X-rays (or similar), and a whole series of breath tests. It was a big adventure. It felt very scary to be out in areas where there were people from outside, people who wore coats, smelt of cold winter air, people who did not understand the need to have clean hands.
The nights were difficult. I was exhausted but found it difficult to sleep on the plastic-feeling sheets on the hard, plastic-covered mattress (all for easy cleaning, of course). I missed my computer. I wanted to be able to distract myself during the night. During the day, I was so exhausted that I regularly dropped my mobile as I fell asleep whilst trying to text a short message to a friend. I listened to my iPod Shuffles , but on a low volume so as not to disturb the others. It was not always enough to block out the other noise.
There was another noise, and it seemed so much louder in the quiet of the night. Several patients were having their lungs re-inflated. It was not a fun procedure. There were jars and tubes and fluid in them. It clearly hurt. It hurt a lot. They moaned and gasped and wept with the pain at times. During the day, I tried to distract them from the pain by chatting with them, trying to make them feel more cheerful so it hurt a tiny amount less.
I was fretting to be out by about the 4th day of being in there. I did not think that I was really ill enough to be in there (they had initially told my father who lives several hundred miles away that he ought to get up there quickly). The nurses were having to tell me off for taking out the oxygen tubes. They were making my skin sore so I used any excuse to take them out. At that stage, the 90 year old in our group had better stats than I did. I felt guilty about taking up bed space, and thought that I should go. The doctors kept telling me that it would just be another day – or two. The fact that I got exhausted and out of breath if I took more than half-a-dozen steps did not seem shake my belief that I was well enough to go.
The world closes down to that small space of that bay, those few staff that worked on our part of the ward. One time, a patient who was in for just a day (but clearly quite a regular visitor) muttered loudly that it was not fair that the consultant spent more than 5 minutes talking to me. She was not hostile towards me, just a bit jealous that I had the attention of the consultant himself. There starts to be a kind of hierarchy amongst the patients as to who has the most need of which staff.
The nurses, care assistants, cleaners and porters were wonderful. They were kind as well as efficient and always made us feel that we were human beings. They were sympathetic to those suffering pain. They did things to persuade the elderly lady to eat and drink who felt that it was all too much effort. They made her toast or went and found something that she would be more likely to try consuming, and made great effort to help her. They tried to maintain the dignity of patients, which is not easy when people are undergoing intrusive tests and treatments.
Eventually, after several days of tests, lots of drugs and a constant oxygen supply, they decided what was wrong with me. It was the consultant who eventually diagnosed me as having asthma (and, possibly COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). As soon as he said it, I knew he was right and was astonished that none of us had realised years ago. I also had a sudden vision of how my grandmother used to get breathless and red-faced. I think that she had asthma too.
He then said something about my being a smoker. I said “No. I’m a non-smoker now. I have to be. It’s just plain daft to smoke if I’m asthmatic.” That was it. They sent the quit-smoking nurse up to see me, and she gave me nicotine gum and a nicotine inhaler thing. I never used them. I have known people who were unable to quit the nicotine patches or gum and wanted to quit without.
It was not easy. I was upset about never being able to smoke ever again. When the urge to smoke was really tough though, I remembered how much tougher it would be to have my lungs drained and re-inflated. That would have been inevitable if I had not stopped smoking.
After about a year, they decided that I did not have COPD, just asthma, and reduced the inhalers from three to two.
I think that it was this last weekend that was the 2nd anniversary of my having to go into hospital. I have just finished a course of antibiotics to clear up another sinus and bronchial infection. I have been finding breathing more difficult since early January because of infections. I apologise for getting fed up and a bit whingy as a result.
I remain a non-smoker, and am a pain for smelling cigarettes through doors, windows, long distances.
These days, I can smell vanilla, and oranges, and the full fragrance of coffee, and engine oil, and brown paper, and wet dogs on the beach…and in the evening, the faint smell of roses on my skin from my morning shower.
Janet's Jottings 