Stop Smoking - My Mother's Story and My Plea to Families

I lost my mother at the age of 64 to emphysema/COPD complications due to smoking cigarettes since she was about 14 years old. She had gone into the hospital on the Sunday, November 11, 2009, because she was unable to breath. I still remember every detail of those seven days that my mother had suffered before she finally took her last breath at 3:30pm on Sunday, November 22, 2009. Also, while all of this was going on I had witnessed the most spectacular works of God. I am sure that there are people who believe that smoking doesn't cause illnesses in people and that there are people who rolling their eyes because they do not believe in God. That's ok, everyone is entitled to their beliefs and so am I. In this article I am going to share with you who my mother was and I am going to share with you all the complications that she had gone through.

My mother was a very special person. She was the type of person who was a magnet for all the hardship and anything that made life more difficult on her. Even through the complications that life through at her, she always managed to make life easier on her family. When she was very young her father passed away and left her mother (my grandma) and 14 brothers and sisters behind. So my mother dropped out of high school to take care of her siblings while her mother worked. It was not until later on when she had gotten her GED. As time had gone on she met a man and got married. After a few years she had my oldest sister. When people compared the pictures my sister looked so much like my mother when they were very young. After awhile when things did not work out for my mother she divorced my sisters' father and moved to the western states. My mother and at the time only daughter, lived in a small home with very little things. No furniture and sometimes little food. She worked while my sister went to school. By this time my sister was in high school and wanted to work. But mom would never let her because she wanted her to get the best education. After awhile she finally let my sister work but never made her feel like she had to. There she met my father and got married soon after. It was a couple of years later when they had me. All my life I have never seen a moment when my parents did not struggle with something. If it wasn't struggling to pay bills it was struggling to put food on the table. I remember the days where peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were our breakfast, lunch, and dinner. As my oldest sister got older she moved out for while with her boyfriend and eventually got married. She then had a baby girl who was our mother's pride and joy. She was the world's greatest grandmother. Then after eight years my sister had another baby girl. Another, grandmother's dream come true. Our mother was a great mother and a wonderful grandmother. She stayed home when she did not need to work to take care of me and my two nieces. Especially, after the girl's father passed away before my sister had her second daughter. My sister and I are about eighteen years apart and so when she had her first daughter I was only eight years old. So not only did my mother have to take care of me she also had to take care of two granddaughters. So all her life she was always taking care of someone else and most of the time she would forget about what she needed or wanted. While she took care of everyone else she was ignoring what she was doing to her own body and thus as time went on she had suffered from numerous diseases and other complications. It finally got to the point where her body couldn't take it anymore so that was when she took her last breath at 3:30pm on Sunday, November 22^nd, 2009.

My mother had many complications that she had suffered throughout her life, however; the following list and descriptions stuck with her until the day she died. One of which is what took her from us. The diseases and conditions that followed my mother for the last several years include: gout, Ulcerative Colitis, osteoporosis, COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), Emphysema, and honestly I think she had the beginning stage of Alzheimer. Each one of these was its own form of torture. In the long run it was the COPD that killed her. It started on the previous Sunday, just seven days before she passed, when she woke up at six o'clock am unable to breath. That was the scariest moment of our lives. I still remember the fear in her eyes when she was gasping. We called 911 and had to wait for them to arrive. Now to remind you she also had osteoporosis really bad and she had 7 broken vertebrae along with broken ribs. We also found out the when she was taken to the hospital and given x-rays that she also had broken her hip the previous day. All she had to do was sneeze or cough for her to break a bone somewhere. That is how frail her bones were. When the ambulance arrived they had to intubate her right then and there. By that Saturday we had already transported her to three hospitals. Then finally on Saturday we were told there was nothing that the doctors could do for her but to make her comfortable. Throughout, this time my mother had been on life support for so long that they even said she probably was brain dead. We as a father decided to let nature take its course and took her off of life support. After all, we all knew our mother never wanted to be on life support but she never filled out a 'Do not Resuscitate Form.' Therefore, we had to make the decision. Because my father was unable to sign the final papers, my sister decided to do it for him. It was on that Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 3:30 p.m. when she took her last labored breath. To this day I remember every detail of that week. It was the worst thing I have ever gone thorough in my entire life. Watching my mother pass away was the most difficult.

I am sure those who have read this article is asking themselves, why is this person writing about her mother's death. Well the reason for me writing this article is to try and persuade anyone who smokes. I know for a fact that my mother's COPD was caused by Smoking. If you are a smoker then I am pleading with you to try and quit smoking. If you don't want to stop for yourself then stop for your children, family, and/or friends. What I went through that week no one should go through that if it could be prevented. If you are asking yourself, why should you care what others think of what you are doing to yourself? That is a good point; I have the same attitude in away. I do not really care what people think of how I look and etc. However, my mother thought that way too. She did not think it mattered what she did to herself because she did not think that what she was doing would harm any of us. Well it did hurt every one of us. Watching her suffer in pain, gasping for air, her lungs sounding like a pot of boiling water, and knowing that everything that she was going through could have been prevented. After all, there are many kinds of treatments, gums, patches, and etc. there has got to be something that can help a person to quit smoking. I am not expecting everyone in the world to stop smoking just because of what I have said here but I do hope to reach someone who will listen to my plea.