To not buy my mum cigarettes?

[Couldbysunny]

With her money.
She wants me to go out and get cigarettes for her. She also asks my DH. She gives her bank card to us to pick up other shopping for her which I am happy to do.
She's a lifelong chain smoker. However she has just come out of hospital due to pneumonia turning into sepsis and having a pulmonary embolism.
She was in 3 weeks and almost died.
This happened last winter as well and she was in 6 weeks.
Both times the doctors have told her that if she carries on smoking she will die.
Her oxygen levels and her blood pressie are very bad.
She also has MS and is in a wheelchair.
She said she was going to stop but is now just smoking again. Only been out of hospital a week. She won't take some of the neds she's been given eother. She's an intelligent woman but she lives in a fantasy world sometimes. She's talking about going on a trip round the world.. she can barely stand. She says she doesn't want to die. She was very upset the doctor had written 'resuscitation not advised' on her notes. She's so physically frail but she won't actually do anything suggested to rectify it. She pretends it's not happening and as a result is deteriorating.
I'm very worried about her.
Of course I know she will still get hold of cigarettes if I refuse to buy them for her. She has neighbours and friends who do shopping for her if she asks.. and when the weather is decent and she's well enough she can get to the local shops herself.
So I know its kind of pointless refusing.
But I hate doing it. I feel like I'm killing her. AIBU to tell her I can't do it?

You say she has MS this will kill her eventually, usually in seventies is it possible she cannot process that thought.

granted smoking will make matters worse but the problems she has had are also related to MS.

If i were you i would let her be and buy her cigarettes if she wants them. Her health her choices.

Dont make her more miserable

OP- it would be very difficult, if not harder impossible for your mum to get travel insurance, surely?

Im in exactly the same position with ddad. He's only just come out after being in critical care. And is straight back on 40 a day. I honestly give up!!

DS Ex Smoker says, well, its difficult because, given the illnesses she does have, she probably thinks it won't make a difference and as a grown adult spending her own money, it's up to her.

DS Non Smoker says, absolutely not, do not buy her any, nor any vapes. She didn't smoke in hospital and was fine, so she'll be fine at home.

Me - I don't know, I'm terminally ill and I'd hate for DH not to bring me e.g. sweets because I need to lose weight. It's difficult being ill and having disabilities and knowing your life is already shortened and then someone telling you what you can and can't do. Given she can get others to buy them I would say that's good enough and you should just say you're not buying them. Not easy I know.

I have never smoked myself and neither has anyone particularly close to me. I understand how hard it must be to give up but I have always said I will not buy my cigarettes for anyone.

Edited for spelling!

Not sure I agree with this statement. Being overweight influences multiple diseases, you may not have them yet, and have determined because you don’t you are healthy. It’s not like there aren’t endless leaflets and advice about losing weight yet you haven’t.

I’m being provocative to reflect back things you’re saying.

You don’t have to enable her but consider she has MS and is in a wheelchair. Of course it’s bad for here but maybe she sees it as a comfort (as well as addiction). Would you say she’s generally happy with life and gets pleasure in lots of other things?

Yes, it is - smoking is perfectly legal for an adult woman. The drugs you mention are not.

There are good arguments for not buying the cigarettes, but yours isn't one of them.

My overweight diabetic DM used to call me to do her online shopping every week, and every week she would be asking for chocolate, ice cream and all sorts of other shit she shouldn't be having. I never ordered it. So she got neighbours to pick them up for her when they went to the shops, or ordered it on Deliveroo. Unsurprisingly, diabetes, congenital heart disease, hyperlipidemia and kidney stones were all listed as causes of death in her autopsy.

Don't enable an addict.

Only legal because it's taxed.

As far a harm goes, tabaco is worse that one of the others I mentioned and not far off the other.

My DM is still smoking away, chest infection hospital stint and first thing she did at home was light up a ciggie. She says it's the only enjoyment she has left now, 84, housebound, v poor health.

We do buy them when she runs out, as she's an absolute cow without them 😅 It's her life/choice really.

The government could legalise and tax cocaine and cannabis, but they haven't, so the fact remains that one is legal and the other two aren't.

Your point about harm is debatable. I've never heard of anyone succumbing to paranoia and suicidal depression from tobacco use (as with cannabis - leaving aside that many users mix it with tobacco anyway) and otherwise healthy people don't suddenly drop dead from a tobacco overdose (as is possible with cocaine).

Well at 84 I understand! You could go any time.. what's the point in stopping what you enjoy just to have a couple more years?
But my mum is mid 60s.. it's not age to go really

You have to be more careful with your health as you get older.
I don't suppose I'll be able to eat this badly when I'm in my 60s no. Let's hope I find the will to get a grip on it!
But tbf as I said previously, my DH gave up smoking in his 40s because the GP told him it was effecting his blood pressure. And his blood pressure is back to normal now.
Your body can handle things when it's younger that it can't when it's older.
I'm mid 30s and currently have no health issues.. I know as I age ill have to take better care of myself in order to remain healthy.
We should all take advice to alter things when we have to..
I'm not the fun police. I'm not trying to make my mum miserable. She was told by a doctor she'd die if she keeps smoking. Not as an abstract "oh one day it will catch up with you!" But as a concrete "you have damaged your lungs and they won't be able to take another infection"

She doesn't have decades. I'm sorry to be blunt but it's more likely to be one decade. The damage was done a long time ago and on top of that, she has MS.

I'd get her the cigs.

The MS is well managed and slow progressing. Yes it may shorten her life slightly on its own, but not by much apparently. The only real effect it's had over the last 20 years is that she can't walk long distances any more. She uses an electric chair to get round town for example.
But she moves around her home unaided, has no carers or anything like that.. just me dropping by every few days. So she's actually in a decent condition health wise apart from her lungs.
She really could live decades more if she took more care of her health and followed the doctors advice.
And she's not saying to me "oh ill be dead soon anyway".. she's got all these plans, she wants to live. But she's in denial about how frail the chain smoking is making her each winter. She's a shadow of her usual self after this pneumonia. And this happened last year as well... but she got back to full health.. as I'm sure she will this time. But what about next winter?? The doctors basically said that she's lucky not to have died and that next time it could be her last... if she doesn't take more care of her lungs.
This isn't someone on their deathbed.. this is someone who could have good quality life left but is throwing it away

You're being placed in a horrible situation where you feel guilty if you deprive her and guilty if you bring her something that will hasten her death. My lovely mum is similar (and has also given up after a long spell in hospital and gone straight back to smoking when out - from comments on this thread not an unusual situation) and I hate cigarettes and tobacco companies with a passion. There isn't a right answer and I'm sorry you're in this situation.

I wouldn't buy anyone cigarettes ill or not I can't stand the things, you are doing the right thing x

YANBU.
My mother has a drinking problem, so I refuse to buy her alcohol.
Yes, she will get her hands on it either way, but I don't feel comfortable enabling her.
It's hard watching a loved one be addicted to something harmful. My sympathies 💕

75k in the UK die each year from smoking related causes versus 40 for weed and 1100 for cocaine.

I'm so sorry for you, its so difficult isn't it. I had this with my mam, she had lung cancer and smoked throughout her life, I woukd have bought her cigarettes, the morning she went in to get her operation she was so nervous, she realised she forgot her cigarettes and asked me to go outside and ask someone for a cigarette and I refused, firstly I was embarrassed to ask someone and secondly I was afraid as she was just about to go for major operation, she went mad at me, she got the operation and was left on oxygen and never smoked again, she only lasted a few months, of all the things I think of, I think why didn't I just let her have it, but I know that's not logical thinking, so can't advise but feel so sorry for you.

@Couldbysunny

The Allen Carr Easyway is now available free via the NHS, but not everywhere in the country. They offer it via Zoom or in person, so your DM could do it from home.

Their success rate is apparently higher than nicotine replacement methods like patches. See if it is available in your local area here:

NHS & Allen Carr's Easyway

Yes - because you can go into any supermarket or corner shop and buy cigarettes, smoke them openly in public and have as many of them in your house or on your person without being at risk of being arrested.

Illegal drugs have to be sourced undercover from a dealer, possibly at personal risk, and there are penalties for being caught in possession of them - many people would lose their jobs even if the penalty was a caution for 'personal use only'; added to that is the expense of drugs, even compared to tobacco costing a fortune in taxes. So there are fewer users, fewer deaths - from direct use - but you should also consider the indirect deaths in the supply chain, gang related murders and so on.

In short, it's impossible to compare them while their legal status is different.

Much empathy… my mum was the same. She smoked about 100 a day (and we live in Aus with the most expensive cigs in the world). Anyhow, it’s unlikely your mum doesn’t already have advanced COPD by now. My mum’s denial was so incredible that she was the only one who was shocked when she was diagnosed with lung cancer on top of her COPD. Even though I was there with her when her doctors told her about the COPD and the Cancer, she told everyone that she had “an exotic form of TB that she caught in Bulgaria”. She would even tell me that to my face and I am fairly sure she believed it because she needed to avoid being responsible for her own illness. Also, she was a nurse. She smoked right up until she was physically incapable, and I refused to buy them.

I’m as anti smoking as they come but buy her the cigarettes

Shes an autonomous adult with intelligence. She’s been told the risks of smoking and she has endured the consequences

Her life sounds really hard. If she is a wheelchair user due to advanced MS and significant smoking related lung disease it’s highly unlikely she has ‘decades of life left’

I totally get how upsetting it is for you to see her doing something that is contributing to her decline but it’s an addiction and an illness in itself.

Id talk to her GP about some advanced care planning, talking about her wishes if she gets sick again and what her goals of care are- maybe even a referral to the community palliative care team as she has two life limiting illnesses.

her talking about a round the world trip is clearly pie in the sky but might be her working through her own fears of her mortality and she could do with a safe place to do that

So that obviously demonstrates that smoking should be made illegal as well.