Reply #274: My mother died of lung cancer [View All]

[tenshi816]

two days after her 65th birthday in December 1998. She was diagnosed 16 months earlier and tried to quit smoking for a few weeks after the diagnosis. She just couldn't manage to quit, though, and her oncologist told me that she might as well continue to smoke because she was going to be miserable otherwise. I'm a non-smoker myself (having grown up surrounded by heavy smokers, I had already had enough of it by the time my peers were beginning to experiment with cigarettes), so it took me a little while to admit that the doctor was right, but he was. He said that my mother would live slightly longer if she stopped smoking altogether, but that her quality of life would decline because she'd be giving up something she wanted/needed to do. Mom smoked until a few days before her death, past the point where she even knew who I was anymore, but it made her happy so what would have been the point in making her stop?