... Actually, not-so-freshly, we've been home for a couple of days, but I'm still a bit stunned from the 8-hour drive. It's been six months since we did that drive, the last time in July, when we went to a couple of Giants vs. Padres games at Petco Park for my birthday. Every time I make that drive, and I've done it fairly often over the past 10 years, I realize how much I despise I-5 through the valley, the Grapevine, and LA. Only one time have I ever gotten through LA without sitting in traffic... July 16, 2011, the day after my 60th Birthday, and the last day I smoked cigarettes. It's a story I haven't shared on my blog, to this point, but I think it's time I did.
I drove down on July 14, meeting-up with my son, and his family. I wanted to go to a Giants game on my birthday, they were down in San Diego, the Navy Lodge was close to Petco, so I offered to take my son and his then 15 year old stepson to the game with me. I had planned on quitting cigarettes, and was wearing the Nicoderm patch when I started out. After the game, I was alone in my room, watching the 11 o'clock news, and all of the coverage concerned the closing of a major freeway through LA, to demolish an old bridge on I-10. They called it "Carmageddon," and predicted gridlock to be wide spread in LA the next morning.
While watching the news, I noticed that I had voicemail on the Lodge's phone, so I picked it up, and punched in the retrieval numbers. It was Mary, calling from David Grant Medical Center, where she had been admitted for a heart related problem. She said "it was no big deal, just a minor thing," but I was scared nonetheless. I tried to lay down and sleep, but Carmageddon and Mary in the hospital kept me wide awake. Realizing I wasn't going to get any sleep, I called my son to tell him I wouldn't be over in the morning, and that because his mom was in the hospital, I was going to check-out and go home, it was a little before midnight. I checked out, drove around to a gas station, filled up, got a cup of some really bad coffee, took the nicoderm patch off, bought a pack of smokes, and hit the highway.
I was hoping that I could get through LA without any problems, so I got on I-5, set my Cruise Control at 75, and didn't have to break or slow down even once. I hit LA at about 2:15 am, and no one was on the road. I fairly flew through the metropolis, and got to the North side of the Grapevine by 4 am. Admittedly, I was really tired, but between the coffee and the cigarettes (which I chain-smoked) helped to keep me focused. I got to the parking lot at DGMC about 7:30 in the morning, making it a 7 hour trip, during which I smoked the entire pack of Pall Mall filters, crushing the last one out in the parking lot.
To this day, I haven't smoked another cigarette. Not only that, but I haven't craved one, and personally find the smell of cigarette smoke (either in the air, or on a person's clothing) offensive. I told myself, long before, that if I ever quit, I wouldn't be an A-hole about it, and "bust anyone's chops" over their habit. I know how I felt when people (mostly ex-smokers) started mouthing off, and I wasn't going to be one of those. I'm not, either. I know how hard it is to kick the smoking habit, I know how painful the cravings get, and while I finally quit, I know that it absolutely MUST be a personal choice on the part of the person smoking. I try to support people I know who are trying to quit, and to encourage them in their endeavor, but I don't get bummed if they go back. I was fortunate, and downright lucky to have gotten away from that monkey, but it isn't without it's scars...
Right before I quit, I had a CT scan on my chest, and it disclosed that I had a series of 5 "nodules" in the upper lobe of my left lung. That was one of the reasons I wanted to quit, and was using the patches (the other reason was that I had smoked cigarettes for 50 years). I got calls from the Heart, Lung, Vascular Clinic every six months, setting up CT scans, and follow-up appointments with Dr. Jason Williams. Two years after I quit, I get the CT, and schedule an appointment with Dr. Williams on the same day as an Epidural Steroid Injection from Dr. Dave Gover (one of my most treasured friends). While I am in the IR Clinic, Dr. Dave asked me if I'd like him to look at the CT results, and tell me in advance what Dr. Williams was going to tell me, and I said, "Sure."
If you've never been told that you have cancer, you just can't imagine how devastating that is, no matter how well you think you can. For a moment, my world stopped spinning, my mind went totally blank, and I was stunned to silence. Dr. Dave, who's had to give that diagnosis to people before, got a concerned look on his face, and asked, "Are you OK?"
It took a minute or two to wrap my mind around what I had been told, but I looked him straight in the eyes and said, "How do we beat this?"
Dr. Dave explained that there were a couple of things working for me, one being the fact that it was detected early, and the other being that it was only in the upper lobe of my left lung, and that there were a couple of things Dr. Williams could do, remove the cancerous section of the lung, or remove the upper lobe of the left lung entirely. I was hoping for the first, but it turned out to be the other, so on October 29, 2013, I underwent a Left Upper Lobectomy. Follow up CT's have been negative, meaning that I have been cancer-free for 4+ years. The surgery was so successful, that it wasn't necessary for me to undergo chemo, or radiation therapies, for which I thank my Heavenly Father daily.
