When I’ve Had Just One More Cigarette

There’s not a lot of humour in this post. There’s no search for sympathy, either. Instead there’s an awful lot of anger and it’s aimed specifically at the idiot in the picture.

My missus took that shaky, crappy photo about ten o’clock last night, using my cheap and nasty mobile phone. It was in one of the cubicles at the A & E Department of North Manchester Hospital, and before you tell me that the phone should have been switched off, it was. I switched it back on for the picture, which was more important than petty rules.

And just in in case you haven’t made the connection yet, the dickhead in the picture is me.

I’ve been very ill since before New Year. A huge chest infection which has been slow to clear up. Bitter cold weather, poor immune system, and I’ve been on steroids and antibiotics since early on New Year’s Day.

A part of the “cure” was to leave the cigarettes off, and I haven’t touched one since New Year’s Eve. I’d also decided that this year was “E- Year”. I’m 65 in three weeks, and it’s time to give it up for good. I can do it. I know I can.

So everything was moving swimmingly towards a victory over this damned chest infection, and then at about five o’clock yesterday afternoon I decided I fancied a smoke and lit a cigarette.

I never took a drag. I just lit it. That was enough to trigger a bout of coughing which I could not control. I couldn’t cough out what was causing the problem because I couldn’t get a deep enough breath and likewise, I couldn’t use my Ventolin inhaler for the same reason. That frightening session carried on for almost ten minutes, and once I was calm I rang NHS Direct. They promised to ring me back in an hour. They eventually rang back in THREE hours but by then it was too late because at seven o’clock, again triggered by this desire for a bloody smoke, I had another out of control, coughing/breathing fit. This time, Her Indoors rang for an ambulance. And at eight o’clock, they carted me off to North Manchester.

After the usual bloods and other bit and pieces, they put me on a nebuliser for ten minutes, gave me another shot of steroids and just to be sure, took a chest x-ray. The upshot of all this was nothing wrong that we didn’t already know about, a huge chest infection which will take time to clear. They adjusted my present prescriptions, extended the course of steroids and gave me a slightly stronger antibiotic and sent me home. Her Indoors and I walked back into the house at about midnight.

And I was angry. Not with the missus. She winds me up no end, often for the most trivial of reasons. I wasn’t annoyed with the ambulance guys for hauling me across Manchester, or even with the NHS for making sure I had to drag that far when there’s a perfectly acceptable A & E on our doorstep. I’m not even annoyed because I received no adequate explanation of why we were taken ten miles instead of three.

I’m furious with myself because the entire fiasco was for the want of a cigarette.

I have been a slave to the weed for fifty years. My early retirement was brought on by furred arteries and breathing difficulties, both caused by tobacco. Since I retired, my smoking has gone up because I’m sat around home most days with rock-all to do but smoke.

I even put Joe Murray through the same problems. In The Summer Wedding Murder, he has repeated coughing attacks, and in Costa del Murder, he is finally diagnosed with COPD and has to pack in smoking.

I have tried every trick in the book to stop, and none of them worked for me the way they did for Joe. Why? Because I didn’t really want to stop.

Well now, little weed, you have pissed me off for good. I have not had a smoke for four days now, and if even lighting one in the house is gonna mean hours and hours in A & E, then I’ll stop lighting them. I will put a moratorium on smoking in my house and car. I know Her Indoors won’t argue. She’s been pleading with me to do it for years. I will declare a tobacco exclusion zone around me. People have been saying for years that I’m a pain in the arse, spouting about this, that, and especially the other. Well, now I’ll be a bigger pain in the arse spouting about smoking and the damage it does.

And the picture above? That stays on this machine. I may even set it as my wallpaper. A semi-permanent reminder of the damage these little sticks of poison can do.

***I regret I can’t open the blog for comments. I’ll end up with bone idle spammers commenting for no good reason, and worse than that I’ll get every dickhead in virtual never-neverland trying to sell me either smoking alternatives or cures, neither of which I want.