Hello new journal.  This is where I'm going to brief and/or scare any of you that keep falling back into your slipping ways ;p 

First off, I'm Rich, notorious for being a fierce quit smoking friend to anyone I ever saw in need, and a not so subtle 'why didn't you call me before you bought that pack?' type quit buddy.  I am a member of MWBF'11 and we had over 20 members just enter the 5th year of being smoke free.  Since I yacked the most there, I pretty much was a team leader.  Every group gets one naturally and we posted thousands of messages, at least 3 full threads before people quit coming back to the forums. April and June were always in/out of our group, as we were to theirs.  I can tell you under no circumstance would I of ever made it past the first 2 months without everyones' support on this board. I have returned often, hell I used to live here before the forum change and wiled away my first year just drawing graphics for anyone that wanted them or kept our spinoff Facebook group active, it was great to keep in touch with our UK friends since there are so many timezones in the world.

Anyway I'm here to talk about a new journey which I'll discuss in coming messages, I'm the type that can read a page of text and get bored before the next one gets in view, so I have a pify quirk, but this new venture is dark and scary for me and I need to share with anyone that wants to learn this as I go.  Last month I was diagnosed with lung cancer stage 3 after a routine chest xray to see if I could take a certain allergy pill.  Details will follow later, I'm starting to feel the effects of yesterdays' surgery coming back, maybe I need a break.  Until later ;D

Rich

Hey Rich.....

Pgh. Girl here.....remember me?  I will have 5 years Dec. 1.   Anyhow......I was just jumping around the Forum and saw your post.  So very sorry to hear of your diagnosis .   you're a fighter though.....and I believe you can fight this.  I will be thinking ....and praying....for you. take care.....

Kathy

Hey Kathy, my fav pgh gal.  Didn't I owe you a cup of coffee?  You live way over on the east where I never go though. Yah, I'll post up more on the story later, got a panic attack typing, its a freaky bit of bad luck.  Stay and touch and thanks for the hi, missed ya.

Rich

So, after 40 years this finally caught up with me.  I think a lot of the reason I never quit in all that time was I used to remove asbestos in the 70's when I was moving state to state looking for work. I took a temp job with a small crew in CO, 2 days, just a dust mask, and made enough to get to Seattle, worked in logging for a spell, then removed asbestos from two more schools.  No documentation, they didn't pay only with cash, so no record on SS or fed taxes, what does a 18yrold care about that then.  So anyways, years later I figure its going to get me or my family history of every male dying at 35 of heart attacks almost to the month I didn't have much to worry about.  I was a HAPPY smoker, the extra pack made me be able to work 12hrs versus 8's which as a carpenter working many miles from home was a time benefit.  That said, its never too late to watch your health. 

End of April 2011 I shot my foot with a nailgun loading the magazine, litterly nailed it to the floor I was installing, cheap Chinese air gun that was brand new, it was just on top of my foot and I plugged in the airline and the safety was defective. After someone got me a hammer and pair of pliers I managed to cut my jeans around the nail head, pry my foot off the floor with pliers on top, then pulled out the nail.  Hurt but didn't hit anything important, top of foot.  After work I went to one of those med express' just to get an xray and while there picked up the worse cold ever.  May 5th I quit smoking for good, I simply was dying of coughing and puking.  I said if this is cancer, I want nothing of it.  So 5.5 years later, I get cancer!  I'm pretty pissed about it.  I quit every vice I had, even sold my motorcycles off. The last wreak on it left me with a broken right side foot to neck so I was done with adrenaline rushs, and it kinda hurt to give away my kayak, but I started to focus on living, not just waiting for potential asbestos or lead poisoning to catch up with me.

So I'm rolling along 3 weeks and started getting that bug that I'm better now, and I had 2 full cartons from WV where they are much cheaper and prob 4 packs in the truck and more tucked around.  The wife opens a pack and squirrels them everywhere.  My teen daughter asked me to come here, she hated me smoking and that when I met Dee.  Warm intelegent woman that knew how I felt.  She gave me a long listof reading material which frankly I can take one screen at time.  I had a nasty motorcyle accident at 38 racing and I've never not had a headache since, so I've learned to be piffy and take info in small batches.  I wandered around the site and met other smokers in my month of May, felt like home, saved me.  2nd month I was pretty uptight, but I was 'modded once or twice'.  Thats' why its so important to stick to your quit group, and to the ones that are in the same stages are feeling the same pains, same anxiety, same sleeplessness, and really much of the same despair.  Its a group hug that only a junkie would understand.  Now at that time I though I had an easy quit, like just walked away from them, left cigs all over the place to Dee's dismay, but I needed at that time a reason to not drive to the 7/11 to buy a pack in case I wanted to say screw it.  Take a drug off an addict and you soon realize why there are so many mods here with the exact right temperment.  I've seen som knarly fights in the chit chat section the last 5 years.  Mods make this place special, so if your new here, they are only talking about your own best interest, and that goal is to quit nicotine.  I opted for the patches for 6 weeks and when I took them off it was cold turkey all over again, I started them 3 weeks after quitting, who knew there was no nic in my system.  So anyway an educated quit really means something! So anyway, I'm rambling, just had surgery Friday and I'm suffering the effects here and there.  I have several holes in my neck which I'll get to later.  I'll probably edit these later but just want to lay this out, and I don't want to make it too scary.

Hello Rich,

My brave and witty friend.  You're the kid that drives their mothers crazy.................. as they secretly admire your gumption with a hidden smile and chuckle behind their hand.  Thanks for sharing this new journey with us.

Much love

(((Hugs)))

Dee

Hi Rich. Your story shows all of us how matter of factly some of us find out we have cancer. It can sneak up on us quickly or very slowly. I am so sorry you are battling the big C. Asbestos and strong chemicals are to blame for many cancers and those companies are never accountable. As for Business, Money makes the world go round even if cancer is the inevitable outcome from business practices.  Hearing those words must have been so difficult. I think by teaching us what you are experiencing will help new quitters and the rest of us stay quit by reading of your journey through the cancer treatments. Educating ourselves about what to expect after receiving news like this can help us fight bravely. Cancer sucks - but the human spirit can fill us with strength so we can take on anything. Good luck in your battle Rich. Take care.

Staying quit with you. 

Deb

Sooooo, I've been a good boy, gave up everything that was dangerous, and that was any racing on any surface, cars, boats, motorcycles, quit drinking in 82', quit the fun sticks in 83', and as my last vice I quit smoking May 11'.  I've wrote 5000 or so messages so all the old timers know me but I used to be witty, but now that I have cancer I just want to warn anyone that cannot seem to quit.  Its of course of to you, and everyone, and I mean everyone has a different personal feeling about it.  The real turning point for me was a story from another sweetheart of the forum, it's called 'my cig, my best friend' by Karen, shes like a 8yr or better quitter now. But search and read that story, its better than the whole book of Alan carr, which I should admit didn't affect me much as I had already quit 3 months prior.  Karen's other work like "diary of a mad quitter" was a crackup, I remember her 6th anniversary she posted Sex Sex Sex to get everyone's attn, so read what we could save of her work from the old forum.  So all this said, I and my group all 100% of us made it to the halfway house, bored our way through the 8-11 tricky months that Penny and I started as we noticed on our Facebook group so many of our friends were dropping out at 8 months like our dear Frank/Foster and we thought it would be a good topic.  I asked Penny to post it cause everyone loved her and would read it.  I was polarizing I thought in a good way. I was just a tad less sensitive to excuses for slips in those days although I've come a long way in 5 years ;D  We all made the clubhouse and all was good, then we progressed 'as a group' to the 2nd through 5th years.  I've been here so long I've seen 3 of my friends make mods, what great peeps they are.  So that is my quit story, now for the new journey.  Last month I needed a skin treatment, the meds called for an xray, bloodwork, and a biopsy.  I got the xray at 5pm and the dermatologist called me next morning at 7am and told me to go get a CT scan, he had already scheduled me a time and made an appt with a thoracic surgeon.  Now this was a total wack to the head half asleep with really just a slight cough for a couple of months.  I mean if your a smoker you know a morning cough to clear your lungs is "normal".  Funny that I had forgotten those went away 5 years ago!  Humans are really creatures of habit, that's why its so easy for cig manufacturers to stuff so much garbage in a cigarette to keep you on their proverbial hook.

My angel (((((Rich)))))),

I have been silent for the last few weeks. The fact that I have not reached out to you directly is not indicative of my feelings about your diagnosis. It means two of my angels are battling the big "C" right now. You, my friend, have saved more lives in the last 5+ years than you even know. You float silently around the Forum and find us souls who need your brand of help. You reach out, grab a hold of the person, and you don't let go. If someone contacts you before they smoke you respond in minutes. I think the funniest memory I have is you telling me rather matter of factly to stick each and every cigarette in a snow bank and let the destruction begin! I digress.

Now it's my turn. I am grabbing a hold of you and won't let go. I have no doubts that FosterFrank would join me. Tell your story because you have a gift of expression and helping others. The forumily is here with you every step of the way. I'm sure you have gone through the entire spectrum of emotions in recent weeks. Just know that you are not alone. You never left a quit buddy behind. The same applies for you.

Many hugs and much love, Jenn

So I get a message on my patient account xray shows a 4x2.5cm mass.  To a carpenter that meant nothing I deal in fractions, inches and feet!  Although I'm chitting myself about it I didn't tell family.  Mind boggling how long 4 days is to see a surgeon that you don't even know what he does. Now I know, thoracic is a chest surgeon, not just a cancer doctor. He sat me down, asked where my wife was and I said at work, "bring her next time" .  Then for the next two hours he told me what I had, and how he wanted to treat it, all on a whiteboard, he drew pictures, erased them drew other pictures, and broke it down into stages. My chest xrays were 14 months apart and then he showed me the CT scan on his computer, that sucker is the size of a chicken egg and growing.  Then he got serious and said you need a MRI asap, then a full body scan, every blood test in the book, breathing test before I even know how to get in there and get a biopsy.  On top of that its at the top of my lung and said he'd have to cut holes beside my sound box and there was a chance he could hit an artery or I'd have trouble talking again.  He said it was advanced stage 3 after he explained stages 1-4.  I'm a blue collar worker, some of this didn't sit in for a few days, but I'll get to those.  I'm also not a phone person, someone that will get on a phone and make appts, he said don't worry, his assistant would do all that for me, but she dropped the ball on getting my oncologist.  Basically my treatment has been as follows, bloodwork, then I had to drive to the next city and get an MRI.  Seems the first place lung cancer spreads is to your brain, then he wanted a breathing test, that was pure hell, and if I didn't pass that then he would have to consider other options, then I had to get a full body scan called a PET-CT, radioactive shot in the arm and you gotta drink about 20oz of the worse tasting yuck liquid and lay in a room with no book, phone, person, so you body can absorb all the chemicls to you internal organs and work its way into all your blood, then 1.5hrs in another tubular machine with your arms above your head, with aging arthritis from carpentry that was probably the worse part of it.  Then he called me that night, this busy assed tireless doctor and told me I had a clear mind and body, just the chest lumps, yes another lump in 5 or 6 days.  I'm guessing by now I have the quick aggressive one, not the one that's 90% curable, but 10%, but hey, I'm a pain in the ass and my May quit buddie dubbed me Ninja Giraffe when I told her ;D  After another 4 days of his schedule I finally went into surgery to get the biopsy part done and to install a chemo port in my juggler vein so the treatment can flush right into the lungs.  Tech has come so far since my mother in law died of cancer in the 70's.  But anyways, he couldn't get a sample of the original mass because another new tumor was totally blocking of the bronk tube to my left lung.  That's strange cause I can still breath ok, just can't run up two flights of steps anymore, used to take 6 smoking without getting winded.  So that was a huge disappointment, wife was sitting in the waiting room from 9am to 8pm, its harder on your loved ones than you, so your lifestyle affects them almost as bad.  I made her suffer greatly when I wrecked racing in my 30's, heh I don't know what she sees in me.  That was when I found out I wasn't immortal anymore ;(

Anyway, my mind is wandering, and I'm rambling, I promise to piffy it up once I get past this surgery pain.  My chest is sore, don't think I redlined but LInda told me two code reds went off while I was on the table, further scaring the hell out of her but I have black and blue marks on my chest.  Got to go home at 9.30 and sheesh, it took4 hrs before I could go to the bathroom again and there is no end of being thirsty, I can't sleep well with the incisions but tongue still feels swelled ;p  Ok from this point out I'll add content as I think of it, and take questions, answers, and ADVICE from anyone that's been through this.  New smokers on the left panel, hang in there and just quit, quit making excuses, we all have been there, we all have been tempted to buy a pack while getting gas, and I'd bed a good number of us (ME) said oh I'm too young to die of smoking!  Your never too young or too old to quit.

Rich