Saturday, July 1966 – Monday, 7 September 2026 The Promise I Made as a Boy I was ten years old when lung cancer took my dad. Watching him die such a horrible, painful death changed the shape of my life forever. It traumatised me. It carved a hole in my heart and soul that has never truly healed, although over the years I have learned how to live around it. At the time, I was angry with him. Angry that he had left us. Angry that he had smoked. Angry that he had not taken better care of himself so he could stay with us, look after us and protect us — especially because we did not have our mum in our lives either. But mostly I was angry because I missed him so much it was painful and I was terrified of a future without him. The broken ten-year-old boy that was me made a promise to his dad and to himself: I would never smoke. And, to be fair to that boy, I kept that promise for the first thirteen or fourteen years of my life. Then I discovered glue, hash and acid — stories for another day — and somewhere in the chaos of my mid-teens, my drug odyssey began. Like those around me, I was trying to escape or block out the madness all around me, and for a while drugs offered a quick, mostly pleasurable form of escape. I only started smoking after my hash ran out. I did not know it then, but I had awakened the little devil of nicotine addiction. I was hooked before I even realised it was happening. Forty-Five Years of Fags, Excuses and Damage Since then, I have smoked roughly 400,000 fags over the past forty-five years — give or take a few. For most of that time, I never stopped long enough to properly think about what I was doing to myself. I did not count the money. I did not calculate the cost. I did not think seriously about the health problems I was storing up for the older version of me. There were many times when I tried to quit, but from my early twenties until my mid-forties I hardly gave it a thought. I was living in London, working a variety of well-paid jobs, and living inside what felt like a never-ending party. Drink, drugs, sex and every available mood-enhancing distraction were all part of the scenery. Smoking was simply there in the background, constant and unquestioned. The First Serious Escape When my baby girl Autmn was born in 1999, I made my first serious, epic effort to stop. I wanted to live and be healthy to look after her and watch her grow into adult and look forward to the day I would become a grandfather, it was the biggest motivation I could have, and I actually found it really easy to give them up. I managed almost two years without smoking (apart from the occasional spliff) and I was rightly proud of myself and decided to book a family holiday as a reward. We packed our bags , sun-cream and headed to Portugal for a few weeks. Someone asked me to bring them a few cartons of fags back to the UK and not thinking anything of this request I agreed. Without knowing it I had awakened the sleeping dragon that was my nicotine addiction. Then that wicked little devil started whispering in my ear they are cheap, one or two won’t hurt, c’ome on, you’re on holiday. Before I knew it, I was back on them. And I hated myself for being so weak. I smoked more than 200 fags during that holiday. It felt as though my nicotine addiction had kicked into overdrive, driving me to poison my body with smoke until the craving was finally satisfied and I was left feeling sick and violated at the chemicals that had flooded my body, chemicals that I had administered by choice. I was back on them and smoking more than ever That became the pattern of my life as a slave to nicotine: stop, feel proud, let my guard down, listen to the voice, start again. Over the years the cycle repeated itself so often that it almost became part of my identity. I was always either smoking, thinking about stopping, trying to stop, or ashamed because I had started again. The Price I Can No Longer Ignore Along the way I was diagnosed with emphysema, COPD and, eventually, chronic lung disease. These were not random bolts from the blue. They were avoidable conditions, and deep down I knew it , but I ignored it in order to protect my addiction; Each diagnosis forced me to pause and briefly consider the benefits of giving up — breathing easier, living longer, wasting less money, not being ruled by a packet of fegs, not stinking of smoke — but addiction is a brutal negotiator and won every time. My dependency on nicotine was stronger than my fear of cancer, of dying prematurely, stronger than my weak willpower and holding my addictive personality hostage and, all too often, stronger than the promises I made to my family , friends and myself and my dad . Even when I cut down or stopped briefly, I kept finding my way back to the habit that has cost me so much over the years, not least my health and a sickening amount of money over the years. |
Monday 7 September 2026 The day — and the week — began like any other Monday. Apart from a telephone appointment with the Lung Cancer Screening Service and a plumber coming to look at a problem in my upstairs bathroom, I was bracing myself for the week ahead and the rhythm of daily life began. I had what I suspected was a chest infection, no doubt made worse by smoking twenty cigarettes a day. I was coughing more than usual and, to my horror and disgust, noticed blood in my phlegm. It was not the first time it had happened, and I told myself that if it continued, I would call the doctor and make an appointment. So I pushed it to the back of my mind and carried on with the day. When the Lung Cancer Screening nurse called, she began going through some health questions and background information before booking me in. I mentioned that I had been coughing up blood, and she stopped the questions immediately. She told me they could not continue with the screening because of what I had said and insisted that I contact my doctor and make an appointment as soon as possible. I was also told that I would not be able to go through the screening programme at that point. I felt disappointed, as I had been waiting years for it, and now it looked as though I would have to wait even longer. I called the doctor, and because I had been coughing up blood, she booked me in straight away and told me to come down to the surgery. The doctor was on the ball. He diagnosed a nasty chest infection and gave me a prescription for antibiotics — Doxycycline 100 mg, which I had never taken before. He also asked me to go to Chorley Hospital’s drop-in X-ray service as soon as possible, just to make sure there was nothing else going on. By that point, I was starting to panic a little, and I promised myself that once the infection had cleared, I would stop smoking immediately When I got home, stressed and frightened, I began chain-smoking while my imagination ran wild with thoughts of cancer and a possible death sentence. I had lost both of my parents to lung cancer, and the promise I had made to my dad when I was ten years old came back with a vengeance, as if to mock and torture me. |
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Spent the night worrying myself sick that I had left it too late and the inevitable had happened, cancer had finally caught up with me. As a lifelong smoker I had always been aware of but tried my hardest to ignore the health risks of smoking ( and various other drugs) but in the back of my mind, locked away in an impregnable part a little voice tried to be heard and demand that I take seriously the danger I was putting myself in As always, I ignored it. I had half a box of fags at home and promised myself that I would finish those and stop smoking then. But I knew I was lying to myself and trying to appease the little nicotine devil that was making a misery of my life Autumn took me for the X-ray, and thankfully I was in and out within twenty minutes. I have always liked Chorley Hospital because it is small and nowhere near as busy as Royal Preston. After the X-ray was taken, I asked the radiographer when the results would reach my doctor. She said they should arrive within the next week or so. That took some of the urgency out of the health scare, and I headed home making promises to myself. I would stop smoking immediately, improve my health and life expectancy, and maybe, with all the money I would save, finally afford the cruise I had been dreaming about for years. I am ashamed to say that I lied to Autumn and Jude about all of this, a lie to protect them. I didn’t want them to worry about me getting seriously ill, so I told them I was having an X-ray on my frozen shoulder, which had been troubling me for a few weeks and I’m waiting on a steroid injection. I couldn’t bear to see them upset and worried about me. To be fair, as things stood, in my own denial I had nothing to worry about . I had a chest infection, and hopefully the antibiotics would kick in, and I would be back to normal in no time. So I smoked the half box of fags, hating myself everytime I lit another and swearing that tomorrow I would pack them in for good ! I also convinced myself that I had nothing to worry about because there seemed to be no urgency with the x-ray results and told myself by the time I got the results through the infection would have cleared up and by then I would have given up the fags. |
Wednesday 9th sept 2026 Woke up this morning feeling positive and in the right frame of mind to begin my journey of quitting the fags for good and all the good things that would manifest .But my day took a nose dive when I got a call from the doctors telling me that they had received the results of the test (alarmingly too fast imho) and the doctor wants to see me asap. I fookin freaks out and asked her could she tell me anything, of course she says no. She wanted me to come in that day , but I had a meeting later that day and was busy and so she booked me in for the first available appointment, which was Friday morning. I went straight out to the shop and got myself a twenty deck of fags and …. To be continued… Make sure to subscribe below to received email notifications for updates. Laters X |
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