Watznauer: Take your last puff during Lung Cancer Awareness Month
I've lost track of how many times I've cracked open "Pride and Prejudice," but here I am again, desperately trying to lose myself in Jane Austen's England and drown out my world with Lizzy and Darcy's dialogue.
I've lost track, but I know the last time.
Seven months ago, I was waiting in an outpatient room in the Interventional Radiology Department at OSF HealthCare St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria. I barely took in any of Mr. Collins' foolishness because I kept glancing up from his never-ending monologues every time a nurse, a tech or the rare doctor passed by.
I was waiting for my mom.
Before they took her back to perform a guided needle biopsy, piercing her scarred lungs, the doctor told us he was almost certain her lung would collapse during the procedure.
Almost certain.
Not for the last time, I hoped against hope a doctor would be wrong.
But he wasn't.
I'll never forget the look in her eye as they pushed her back into that cramped room with a chest tube jutting out from her back.
I had, at that time, never felt so helpless to take away her pain.
That feeling is not so rare anymore.
November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and man. I have never been more aware.
At 57, my mom was diagnosed, just a few weeks after the biopsy-turned-hospital stay.
I'll skip the specifics of type and staging. I will say there's no good way to hear your mom's cancer prognosis for the first time, but on a video call from the oncologist's office, phone propped between me and my sister while we're squeezed in the backseat during a girls trip was definitely not ideal.
I'm sure hearing it from your nearly hyperventilating little sister outside an Airbnb 30 hours later wasn't much better for my brother.
It hasn't stopped being scary.
I don't know what the lesson is yet, if there even is one. I've never been big on the idea that everything happens for a reason, but I'll let you know if I find one.
What I can say is it's OK if you're scared. It's scary. The whole time it's scary. And it sucks and every day feels heavy and impossible, and that's OK.
In the last seven months of terrifying, we've still found reasons to smile and laugh. We've celebrated victories.
Scaling the magnitude of those victories is somewhat uncomfortable, but for me, one of the best is being able to put her smoking in the past tense. My mom was a smoker.
You can't possibly know how happy I am to be able to say "was" this time. After more than 30 years of cigarette smoke, she's free. My mom is no longer a smoker.
But that doesn't erase the last 200,000 cigarettes. They've left their mark.
The mark dims each day without another puff, though.
On the third Thursday in November, the American Cancer Society hosts the Great American Smokeout, an annual endeavor to help people quit smoking.
The cancer society says quitting improves your health immediately and over the long term, no matter how long you've been smoking.
But it's difficult. I mean, it's addiction, after all. It puts up a fight, and it would do anything to win.
The Great American Smokeout encourages smokers to quit for just one day, but with a good plan and support, one day can turn into a year, five or 25.
My mom's radiation oncologist told her to go as long as she could between waking up and having her first cigarette of the day. It took a while, and some prescription help, but eventually she got through a whole day, a whole week and now nearly a month.
I'm so proud of her and so so lucky she's my mom. Somehow I got the best one.
Editor's note: This column was written Nov. 14, 2023. Ten days later, Michele Watznauer died from pulmonary fibrosis and lung cancer. She was 57.
Kelsey Watznauer is the regional opinion editor for the JG-TC, as well as trying to become an advocate for pulmonary fibrosis awareness. at 309-820-3254 or follow her on Twitter
COMING UP: Next weekend, a look at lung cancer prevalence and resources in Central Illinois.
Sign up here to get the latest health & fitness updates in your inbox every week!
