In thinking you should pack up smoking ....

[monkeyme]

if you have probably had your larynx removed because of cancer?

I ask, as DH has been telling me,that on the way home from work, he saw a guy stood outside a pub inhaling a cigarette through his tracheostomy....

That guy probably reckons that he hasn't got long anyway so fuck it, he will smoke all he wants as it will not make the slightest bit of difference to give up now. And he probably has a point.

Every time I went to the oncology clinic with dh we used to see people smoking outside

I once saw a picture in a journal of a man who had all four limbs amputated because of a smoking-related vascular disease. He had a hook system specially constructed to hold his cigarette for him.

Some people just feel overwhelmingly that their lives wouldn't be worth living if they gave up. Which is beyond tragic.

FIL has had half of one of his lungs taken away, and was recently in hospital for several weeks with something wrong with his chest. They had to drain loads of nast looking puss out of him

He smokes 60 a day and says it's not because of smoking.

He also says that smoking does not cause cancer, that the docs don't know what causes cancer and just blame it on smoking!!!!

And........ he wonders why we don't take DD to his house to see him (4 people in the house all smoke heavily) If he wants to see her he has to come to our house all we meet him and his wife (Not MIL) out.

Message withdrawn

Yes, while it is obviously better to give up before you get that ill (or indeed never to start), once you are falling to bits and giving up will only buy you a few weeks of pain, suffering etc, why on earth would you want to go through what you percieve as additional misery and stress of giving up?

I regularly see people with serious chronic diseases (not terminal illness though) such as COPD and diabetes, who can't/won't give up smoking. Even losing limbs and their eyesight doesn't incentivise them.

(And inhaling through a trache must be very difficult, there's no muscular control so how could he 'suck'?)

what madamez said.

my mother has COPD. she has given up in an effort to delay its advance.

emphysema is a nasty way to die.

I think you should save your ire for the tobacco companies and the MPs who continue to coin in money from acting as their "advisors". It's addictive, that man was a victim and ffs he is paying now, isn't he?

How do you know he had his larynx removed due to cancer if he was just some random bloke your DH saw in the street?

There are a wide variety of reasons the guy could have a trachy, not necessarily laryngeal cancer. There may also be a number of reasons as to why he continues to smoke.

I detest smoking. Watched my grandmother die of emphysema. She had home oxygen and used to turn off her oxygen before lighting up! I also work in a hospital and although despise the fact that to get in or out of my building, I have no alternative but to walk through clouds of cigarette smoke casued mainly by patients stood outside! (I work in cardiac!)

There is a woman in my local town who is very ill - think cancer - she is so ill she is in a wheelchair and can't hold her cigarette and someone has made her a stand type thing to hold her fag with a silver foil ashtray taped on where the ash falls. Makes me so sad.

It took a good old look over the pearly gates to make my fil give up at 60+.

I can understand the fatalistic attitude if you have had such a diagnosis,I have worked in thoraic surgery and work with cardiac patients, so know that a diagnosis of cancer or heart disease isn't going to be enough to stop people from smoking. In some respects because a heart attack doesn't have any visible scars, and thoracotomy scars eventually heal and fade, it can be difficult for patients to rationalize the damage that has been done, but if you have a great big hole in your throat I'd have thought that it was a bit more of a reminder that this may not be good for you!
(Of course as an ex smoker I am sat upon my laurels, polishing my halo.)

maybe he got stabbed in the throat and that's why he has the tracheotomy and smoking helps deal with his depression?

your dh can't diagnose him via bus window so without the full story you can't know his reasons.