My grandma passed away last Friday. She was 85.
While she lived a good life and a full one, to be sure, her final years were anything but easy. After being diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) nine years ago, her health deteriorated to the point where she couldn't breathe without an air tube plugged into her nose nearly 24 hours a day.
It hurt so much to see this woman, who had owned a hardware store during the 1940s and '50s and had taught elementary school for several decades, reduced to a shell of her former self. I had known her only for the final 19 years of her life. I can only imagine how much pain the rest of my family, who knew her far longer, is going through right now.
One of the hardest things to comprehend, though, is that Grandma didn't have to suffer like she did. Everything she went through came as a result of her having COPD, a condition she developed as a result of smoking cigarettes for nearly 60 years. While she didn't smoke often, she smoked enough to develop a disease that is the country's fourth-leading killer, taking more than 100,000 lives every year.
According to the American Association for Respiratory Care, most of those 100,000 are smokers, as cigarette smoking is the leading cause of COPD and is connected with more than 80 percent of cases. Because of this statistic, I know that every time I see a cigarette resting between the fingers or lips of an Ohio University student, I will only be able to see my grandma and think how her life was affected by a habit and an addiction that millions acquire each year.
I know, too, that over the next three years, I will see too many 18- and 19- and 20-year-olds smoking their first cigarette as a symbol of their freedom from Mom and Dad, and then get hooked. I was amazed this summer when I saw no fewer than 10 new students, all freshmen in their first quarter at OU, start smoking simply because they could. But I was more amazed, and sickened, to read in yesterday's Post about the efforts of three freshmen to start an extreme smoking club.
These three students, as smokers who have spent much less than a year in Athens, cannot even fathom what it's like to walk the sidewalks of the city, surrounded by clouds of smoke, avoiding the thousands of cigarettes smoked on this campus every day. They have no idea how frustrating it is to inhale unwanted second-hand smoke that might lead to lung cancer for a person who has never picked up a cigarette, let alone put one in their mouth and puffed on it. They also have no idea of the fun that awaits them if they continue their nicotine-filled lifestyle -
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