[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by M G F on June 6, 2009, 4:13 pm, in reply to "Guilty Pleasure…"
‘Glad I could do that for you, Nick 
Don't feel guilty. Some day, I’ll write about my thoughts and feelings after assisting in a lung-reduction performed on a smoker only ten years older than I am now.
In the meantime, you might enjoy this recollection.. Surgery nurses usually don’t see patients after a procedure, but since I also work as a floor nurse, I occasionally have the opportunity. A couple of years ago I participated in a procedure on a 30 year old woman to correct a couple of congenital heart defects, that, if left uncorrected could become life threatening. Post-surgery, the patient was expected to live a full life with no problems related to the defects. Advances in thoracic medicine have greatly reduced the number of procedures requiring extensive opening of the chest, but in this patient’s case it was necessary.
The procedure began slowly and cautiously, taking care to minimize the physical trauma, and eventually her chest was open. We saw her heart, aorta, pulmonary artery - and her lungs. They were exactly what I would have expected had I known ahead that she was a smoker – almost black, with darker black mottling spread throughout the surface. From their color and shape, I speculated that the woman was a moderately heavy smoker and had started when she was relatively young. I watched her lungs inflate and deflate with the ventilator. Every now and then they would be given a much deeper “cleansing breath” to simulate normal, unassisted breathing; and it occurred to me that in the course of a day smokers probably take more deep breaths than non smokers, but far from being cleansing, they are for the purpose of filling our lungs as deeply as possible with a thousand poisons.
Finally, the procedure ended after going smoothly and successfully, and I found myself on the hospital roof smoking with three other nurses who had assisted. We discussed it:
“Did you see her lungs?”
“I’m 8 years older than her. I hate to think what mine look like.”
“Yeah, sort of makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it does. It really does.”
I didn’t say much. Personally, I thought they were beautiful. Like mine. But then, I always have been partial to black.
A week later, she was transferred to my floor for the next stage of her recovery, and we struck up a sort of nurse-patient friendship. The day before she was to be released, as I checked and recorded her vitals and generally made sure she was doing well, I asked if she thought she would be able to refrain from smoking when she went home. Surprised, she asked how I knew she was a smoker.
“I’ve seen your lungs, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right. Is it . . . are they . . . you know, all black and stuff?”
I remember smiling in what I hoped was a reassuring manner and telling her “No worse than mine, I’m sure.” I explained that the shock value pictures published by the American Lung Association were extreme cases. I also told her that since she had gone for two weeks without smoking, it would be best for her health if she didn’t take it up again after she was discharged. She said she would try, but that the thought of having a cigarette was the first thing that had come to her mind after she came out off her heavy sedation in the days after her surgery.
I happened to run into her several months later at the drugstore. She looked great, like a model of good health and healthy living. I, however, knew better.
We were both buying cigarettes.
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