Originally Posted by MelodyL

Hi. Welcome to Neurotalks. You sound like a very caring and compassionate person. Your mom in law is very lucky to have you in her life.

I did try and fine a message forum on cancer but I was not able to find one. Perhaps if you searched another website you'll have much better luck.

And you are SO right about the smoking. I lost a dear friend at the age of 58 to lung cancer, another friend at age 53 to lung cancer. Both were heavy life long smokers who thought "it's not going to happen to me".

Both were told by their doctors to quit and both did not listen. It's obviously extemely hard to give this up. I lose my mother to emphyasema 15 years ago. My mother was one of 10 siblings. All had cancer. ALL OF THEM. AND EVERYBODY SMOKED.


It's a horrible addiction. And you are right in telling people to STOP SMOKING.

Unfortunately, the majority won't listen. I have a diabetic friend who will not stop. She says "it calms me down". How can I react to that? Nothing I can do.

But the two oddest experiences I had with smokers actually blew me away.

The first was outside of Cornell Medical Center in NYC a few years ago. They have smoking booths (glass cubicles outside the hospital where you can sit and light up).

You have no idea how many doctors and nurses were smoking. I walked up to one and said "may I ask you a question?" and she immediately said "Yes, you want to know why I'm a doctor and I smoke???" I said "well, yes, actually", "you obviously know the dangers". These were her exact words:

"I don't want to gain weight, I'd rather have cancer".

So how does one respond to that? One does not.

And the other experience was at the funeral of one of my friends who died from this disease. Everybody was outside smoking. And they JUST WERE AT HER FUNERAL.

So it's one heck of an addiction, isnt' it??

Hey, if one person reads our posts and decides "I don't need this stuff in my body", and throws out their cigarettes, hey we might have done SOMETHING.

We can only try.

Anyway, you are a very nice person to be helping out your mother-in-law. She sounds like a feisty lady who is not going down quietly.

I wish her the best.

Take care
Melody