Smoking was once a very large part of my life. It was there when I wanted a break, which was as often as humanly possible. My relationship with smoking was a strange one – I knew that it was bad for me in every way possible, but I was always able to put a time limit on it which somehow made it okay to keep going.
Not to my surprise, when turning up to medical school I found that all my colleagues didn’t smoke – at least not to my knowledge! I saw no telltale signs of smoke pluming up from behind the bike shed. I felt almost like a naughty schoolchild when people I knew from the school walked past and caught me having a lunchtime cigarette.
So what changed? Well, remember I had said I put a time limit on smoking? The definition of that changed dramatically when I first met a patient with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, who had smoked 20 cigarettes a day for 40-odd years. It changed my outlook. Sometimes when told about the side effects you tend to think: ‘It won’t happen to me, I won’t get lung cancer. I won’t get COPD’.
For me there was a huge difference between being told about what could happen if I continued smoking to actually seeing the awful effects it can have on someone.
I now have been smoke-free for nearly 4 months – and feeling great!