My aunt Erin had a history of smoking, but that was so long ago that it belonged to the mists of antiquity.
She had smoked pretty intensely until her early forties, and then she quit. (But that was almost 40 years ago.)
In December 2024, a persistent cough became apparent that wouldn’t go away. The cough then quickly grew worse, until she could hardly speak anymore. The hoarseness of her voice was alarming — what was causing it was much worse.
Lung cancer, stage IV. Metastasized to the bones.
The diagnosis came mid January 2025. By the end of January she was gone.
What people don’t understand — especially in skin cancer and the many cancers relating to smoking habits — is that the damage caused due to tanning and smoking cannot be “undone.” Some (millions of) cells are damaged, and quitting tanning or smoking won’t “un-damage” these cells. If they started to proliferate uncontrollable, they will keep doing that beyond any measures you will take.
One single episode of sunburn in your childhood can be enough to develop skin cancer in your mid forties. It’s that bad.
As for smoking, my aunt Erin thought she was safe after 40 years of non-smoking, but the damaged cells didn’t care one bit. They amassed into cancerous lung tumors, and then spread while nobody had a single what was actually going on. The cough announced the final chapter.
In general, smoking really does cause various types of cancer — it is widely considered to be the single worst seed that will sprout to a cancer seedling in the end.
In some people the seedlings never show, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there: if my aunt would have died of heart failure in 2023, we would have never known she had stage IV lung cancer. But in any case, the chances of getting various types of cancer greatly increase as the smoking years in a person increase.
And “chances” are often excuses for people to ignore their very lifestyle, because chances aren’t guarantees, after all —
But they are promises all the same.
SOURCES: Getty images.
No comments:
Post a Comment