Happy Friday to one and all!
Most of you may not know me, as I don�t post often on the SSC, but I am golferman�s wife. I just saw Bubba�s post regarding a personal life and death situation and thought I�d post one of my own. Like Bubba�s experience, I hope that you will take my own experience to heart and that it might help someone who is struggling to hold onto their quit.
On 3/27/06, I presented myself to the hospital emergency room with severe right-sided chest pain that radiated into my shoulder. I couldn�t sit, lie, stand or move without excruciating pain. I am a registered nurse, and if you guys haven�t heard, we nurses tend to diagnose ourselves (smile). I walked into the emergency room and told the staff that I thought I was having a gallbladder attack. A few tests later, I was told that they were admitting me because I had bilateral pulmonary emboli (2 blood clots in my lungs). I would have made a lousy doctor, so I�ve decided to stop diagnosing myself! LOL!
Pulmonary emboli can be a life-threatening, fatal event. It�s quite common, but difficult to diagnose. Unfortunately, most of what they know about pulmonary emboli has been learned through postmortem exams (autopsies). I am one of the lucky people who managed to survive it. Basically what happens is a blood clot forms somewhere in the body, most of the time in the legs. The clot breaks off and travels through the blood stream, through the heart and into the lung�s arterial circulation. If the clot is too big, it can totally stop the circulation that supplies the lungs with oxygen.
The clot on my right side was described as �large.� Obviously not large enough to totally cut off my circulation, but had I still been a smoker (nicotine constricts the blood vessels, thus compromising the circulation), I truly believe I would not have survived this. My quit was �solid� before this happened, but this has certainly �sealed� it for me. There is no way that I would ever put another cigarette to my lips again. I feel very fortunate to have been spared, so I�m not going to take my health for granted ever again.
If you�re struggling in the early days of a quit, or you�re flirting with the thoughts of having �just one.� Stop and seriously think about what smoking does to your body. Do you really