thanks, Zep, for bringing this site up.....this is one of my favorites and I try to visit it once a month....it also helped Iris resolve her quit.

Rough week for me at work....two customers..one my age and one a couple of years older. The one my age I have know for seven years......she quit one month after me because of difficulty breathing...started smoking at age 10....48+ years!! She was rushed to emergency a couple of weeks ago....could not breathe....collapsed.. and was at the pharmacy yesterday picking up medications. She was dignosed with emphysema.....before, she used to only buy cigarettes or candy, after she quit smoking...she still continued having difficulty breathing...now on nebulizer and prednisone..her face was all blown up and was learning how to rebreathe. She said to tell the group.....please quit before it is too late....sooner or later we all will pay the piper! If the medicine she was picking up failed to work....then the oxygen tank was the next step.

My other customer lost her husband to lung cancer a month and a half ago.....every week when she came into the store to get his pain medication she bought 3 cartons of cigarettes....one for her, one for her daughter and one for him! She came into the store just a half hour after the other one left....and she passed me in the aisle looking as pale as a ghost and like she was ready to collapse....I asked her what was wrong.....and as she grabbed a bag of cough drops....she said that her oxygen tank was in the car and it was too heavy to carry in....why oxygen? I asked.....have known her for years too....have emphysema, she said....has had oxygen for 3 years and told me she would turn it off....go out and smoke and come back in and turn in on again. I helped her carry two light bags to her car and even before she got in she had the oxygen tubes in her nose. Still smoking?....she quit three weeks ago...was wearing a patch and still craved the cigarette...she is also dying....fast.

Me take another puff?...not on your life!! See too many people every day at work spending hard earned money to buy something to kill themselves with.

Linda........Seven months, one week, two days, 7 hours, 27 minutes and 18 seconds. 4446 cigarettes not smoked, saving $760.16. Life saved: 2 weeks, 1 day, 10 hours, 30 minutes.