The timeline of my disease is a little bit fuzzy to me.  When my mother came to live with us about ten years ago one of the first things we had to do was get her set up with a pneumologist.  She had been living in Rawdon and attending the hospital in Joliette. The Dr. Two (my family Dr.) arranged for her to see The Dr..(pneumologist for both my mother and I)  For a couple of years I took my mom regularly to her appointments and I got to know The Dr. a little.  I did not like him.  He was cold and indifferent towards my mother.  He offered her no hope.  Her inability, her refusal to stop smoking was a barrier between them that could never be breached.  She simply did not care about living, and he could no longer bear to watch indifferent, suffering patients who had given up on life, die on his watch.  I ended up on The Dr.'s patient list innocently enough.  I had recurring sinus infections most of my adult life, a couple or two every year, lots of prescriptions for antibiotics.  Sinus drained once, and only once!  The Dr. Two sent me for a PFT, along with other tests to see if she could figure out why so many infections, around 2003 or 2004.  She called me into her office a week or two after the PFT and told me I needed to see a pneumologist and sent me to see The Dr.  I can't say I was surprised.  I had gotten myself very fit in the 90's with bike riding.  I rode hard for exercise every day for three seasons of the year, for about five years.  I was lawn bowling a hundred games and more every summer as well, and I ran on the green instead of walking most of the time.  A year or two before being sent for the test I started to notice limits to how hard I could push myself, and I was feeling a general fatigue and malaise that I had not felt before.  When I saw him, The Dr. informed me that I had COPD, emphysema.  It was early days still.  I don't remember my numbers.  I think my mom and I saw The Dr. for about a year as patients at the same time before she died.  


I would like to say that I immediately stopped smoking.  I really would.  I wish I could.  I should have, I really should have. Instead, I did the off/on/mooch/chew gum thing for a couple or few years.  It is rather shameful to remember my rationalizations.  I could say that addiction is a bitch but that would be just so much horse puckey.  In a past life I threw off cocaine and heroin addictions as if I had a cold when it was time.  No problem.  Decided it was time to stop, I stopped.  This was a little different.  Smoking now was playing dice with my life, officially.  I no longer smoked my pack a day.  Some days and weeks I did not smoke at all.  I mooched whenever I had the chance.  I bought my smoker friends packs of cigarettes once in awhile to ensure I did not become too much of a pain in the ass.  

I don't know how many times over the last 30 years, maybe more, that as I lit a smoke I would wonder to myself, is this the one that will spark cancer?  Is this the one?  One of them, not so long ago, was the one.  I was not invulnerable.  It does not always happen to someone else.  Play with fire and you get burned.