Take a breath!

My Daddy as a young man

This blog post is going to deal with something that has been on my heart for the last several days. I'm not really sure why, but I have been thinking about my father's death lately. I have wrestled with the idea of writing this post because, I know, to some, it will sound preachy. Many of you who read this will dismiss it in the "that's none of your business" category, but, regardless of the reaction this post may receive, I am still writing it.
I lost my daddy in 2007, officially, but I really lost him 3 or 4 years before that. I don't mean I physically lost him as one can only die once, but his quality of life deteriorated greatly as his disease progressed. My father had COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). Some people know it more commonly as Emphysema. Emphysema is actually under the COPD banner. In layman's terms, he had problems breathing. He contracted this disease from smoking cigarettes for many years.
My dad started smoking in his teens way before anyone knew the effects smoking had on our health. In fact, you can even find some old ads where doctors recommend smoking to patients for better health. My father grew up in the age when smoking was cool. All of the leading men and ladies of the day were onscreen smokers. The other day, I was watching a Dick VanDyke episode that centered around a dinner party. The screen was literally filled with smoke as the party goers in the scene lit up. You hardly ever see a TV character on television who smokes anymore, and if you do, they are usually the "bad" boy or girl. As a child, both my parents smoked, and I grew up with it as a constant in my life. I will share something with you. I have never smoked ANYTHING in my life. A cigarette has never touched my lips. I live in dread for the day when I audition for a role, and it will require me to smoke. I'm sure some of you find that hard to believe, but it's true. I have never had the desire to even try it. Maybe that's because I was around it all my life. Over the course of my childhood and teen years, my dad tried to quit several times. It wasn't until I was a senior in high school when my father's doctor told him he had to have a bypass because he had Atherosclerosis - a condition worsened by smoking where plaque attaches to the arterial walls making blood flow difficult. Add to that the fact that smoking was causing his veins to constrict therefore making it even harder for the blood to flow through his veins increasing his chances for stroke or heart attack. After that surgery, my dad quit for good after being a heavy smoker for more than 30 years. Unfortunately, by then, damage had already been done. He would not realize this until years later.
In 1998 when my husband left, my girls and I had to move in with my parents. My dad became the only father figure my girls really had. They were 2 and 5, and "Papa", that's what they called him, was their "Daddy" My dad was at home and able to take care of them because he had been on disability for many years due to his rheumatoid arthritis. My girls were very close with him, and I thank God that they had those years to get to know their grandfather before the COPD really took hold of him. He adored them and was able to spend their elementary years with them in fairly good health. When my dad was first diagnosed with COPD, he did breathing treatments, much like asthma patients, with a machine and Albuterol. He also had an inhaler. As the disease got worse, he would spend hours in his recliner in the den hooked up to his oxygen machine. The stairs became a problem as he could barely breathe from the small amount of physical exertion. A hospital bed was moved into the living room on the first floor, and that became his bedroom. His oxygen tube was now a permanent accessory. I lived in the basement apartment just below the floor my dad was on. I remember one night waking to a loud thud on the floor. I tore up the stairs. My father had gotten entangled in his oxygen hose on the way back from the bathroom and fallen. As I ran into the living room looking for the source of the noise, I saw my dad on the floor sitting cross-legged. He was in a panic. In the fall, his oxygen hose had gotten disconnected from the machine. He was gasping for air. Of course the panicking was making it worse. Through short, raspy breaths he asked me to get a reserve tank. For something that's filled with air they are really heavy! In the rush, I dropped it on my foot. I'm amazed I didn't break a bone. We got it hooked up, and he began to calm down and breathe a little easier. Because he hadn't physically exercised in so long, his legs were extremely weak. Getting him up was a challenge, but we finally did. From that night until he left us, he never spent another night in his bed. He stayed in his recliner in the den for fear that he would get tangled in the hose again. He would not go outside because of the air quality. I bought a new car and took it home for my mom and him to see. He would not even come out on the front porch. Over the next few years things got progressively worse. When you have that much trouble breathing, you can't do much of anything. It is difficult to laugh, to even speak.  In November of 2007, he had to be hospitalized. I remember visiting him and watching him literally panting for air. I would take both his hands in mine and look him in the eyes and breathe slowly with him, trying to get him to take in more air rather than short little puffs. I will not forget the fear in his eyes as I tried to calm him, soothe his panic as he was minute by minute losing more and more air. There was not much more that could be done for him, but try to make him comfortable. I visited with him on a Wednesday night and by Friday he was gone. There is no cure for Emphysema. You can't get better. You can only get worse. My dad couldn't undo the damage that had been done by all of his years of smoking. My dear friends who are smokers can't undo damage either, but I wonder how much sooner we would have lost my dad if he had not quit smoking when he did. My girls would have never known their "Papa" and what a shame that would have been. If you don't want to quit for yourself, quit because you don't want your loved ones to watch you go through what I watched my dad go through. Don't make your wife, husband, children watch you die slowly knowing their is nothing they can do.