Hi everyone. My name is CJB and I am a non-smoker. For nearly 3 decades, I couldn't say that. I'll tell you a bit about it, but first...
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I was a smoker for 28 years straight with two exceptions: I quit once when I was in college. No apparent reason that I can remember. Just stopped for 3 months. Then just started again for no apparent reason. Just wanted a smoke. The other time I quit was when I was pregnant and then for 8 months afterward while I fed kidCJB. Started again after nearly a year and a half because we all get turns in life to do ridiculous and unexplainable things. That was one of mine.
I’ve smoked one to two packs a day for almost 30 years. (There were days many years ago when I smoked 3 packs. Yes - three.) Then, in January of 2007, I quit. Just up and stopped. Our family had a sudden, dramatic change in routine and I took full advantage of it.
KidCJB came home one Monday after school in January of that year with a sore leg. It hurt to walk. Tuesday morning it was worse, so I kept him home from school. We didn't take it too seriously because we thought it was self-inflicted. He had done this thing on Sunday where he took a belt and tied his legs together and tried to jump as high as he could. He fell over. Repeatedly. Now, you have to believe me when I say that he’s really quite intelligent. I never would have thought I’d have to say to him, "You know, honey, maybe it’s not the brightest thing to tie your legs together and then jump around like an madman." (Although having accumuated the usual list of daily madlibs that parents utter: "Don’t put the melon baller in the dog’s ear." "Don’t put the phone in the aquarium," etc, perhaps I should have been more verbal with my reservations.) Anyway, by the very early AM of Wednesday, he was weeping with pain and, to make a very long day much shorter, by 8:00PM Wednesday night he was post-surgery for acute septic arthritis of the hip. So, we landed on the pediatric floor of Portland's most wonderful pedatric hospital (Emanuel) for the duration, wondering if there had been permanent damage to his hip joint. (Ended up that it had nothing to do with jumping around like an idiot with his feet tied together. All that story did was send the medical people in the wrong direction for a while, thereby using up precious time.)
So. There I was. My husband (who still smokes about a pack a day) and I decided to split up the hospital duty. He took days because I still had two OPKs (other peoples’ kids - I'm a nanny) to take care of from 7:30AM to 5:00ish. To be honest, for the last five years or so, I didn’t smoke much during the day. Sometimes I’d sneak one at nap time. But I chain smoked at night. That’s when I could burn up at least a pack. And now I was stuck at the hospital.
When I got back to the hospital on the first night after retrieving some things from home, I knew what I had to do. I did not want to be one of those nervous, guilty moms who paced up and down outside, smoking. So I didn’t smoke. I just stopped. I made the decision that I was just too busy with my poor then-9-year-old and his no-appetite, drug-sluggish pain. For 8 nights, I said to myself repeatedly, "This is where I belong. I do not belong outside smoking. I am no longer a smoker. I don't smoke."
I wish I could give you the secret. I wish I could tell you how and why I was able to do that. I can’t really. The change in routine was huge, though. HUGE. That and kidCJB had wanted me to quit. It just seemed like a fair gift to give him for what he had to go through during that whole ordeal. (8 days and nights in the hospital. 6 weeks of at home IV antibiotics. Wheelchair. Crutches. Walker. The whole thing took a couple of months.) But the gift comes back all of the time. Not only because I feel better physically, but because I know now that I’m strong. Really strong. I was there for my kid - really there for him through the whole intense drawn-out trauma, AND I quit smoking at the same time. Sometimes even now - 2 and ½ years later - kidCJB occasionally still tells me that he’s proud of me for quitting. And when my sweet now-12-year-old tells me that? Then, friends, I’m f*#^in’ bulletproof.
I can't give you a map to your destination, but I can point you to a landmark to which you can return again and again when necessary: The strength that I found isn’t particular to me. You have that strength inside you. Every single one of you. I know you do.
Help each other find it. Turn it loose.
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