Day 117

It was in the early evening 124 days ago that I received an urgent phone call. I had visited my doctor that morning and he had sent me for an x-ray. He called to say that although he had not seen the x-rays, the results had been phoned through to him. My heart was fine, my left lung was fine, but there was a shadow on the right lung. He would be referring me to a chest specialist at the hospital. A week later I was introduced to me MacMillan cancer nurse. The cigarette I smoked after breakfast that day was my last.

It was a great relief when I was told that the shadow on my lung was not a cancerous tumour but merely a plug of mucus, that I did not have cancer but had merely developed a hyper-sensitivity to a form of fungus, one which we all have in our lungs. This is quite easily controlled and doesn't affect my life in any way. Nevertheless, I have not smoked another cigarette, and this is day 117.

On the whole, I have found it much easier than I would have expected to resist lighting up - despite having not long before stocked up with my favourite brand at duty-free prices! At first, I took as my inspiration all those health workers - doctors, nurses, technicians, clerks - who had spent time with me. Not only that, they had treated me as an urgent case, as though they really appreciated (as they must have done) that every day saved before treatment gave me a better chance of survival. If, after all their efforts, my will-power had not been up to the job, I would have felt that I had let them all down.

Of course there were times when the thought crept into my head that just one cigarette wouldn't hurt... But I knew full-well from previous experience that "just one" fairly quickly becomes "just one more" - and I would very soon be back where I had started. Whenever the thought entered my head i tried to find something else to do with my hands, something that also required me to think. The longing soon disappeared.

There are still times when I almost reach for the cigarettes and lighter: "habit" times like after dinner. But I have surprised myself. One of the times I thought would be most difficult was when driving along those almost deserted French motorways. Or to be more specific, those times when my wife was driving and I was a passenger. During my life as a smoker I could quite easily get through three cigarettes during the Old Bat's spell of an hour and a half at the wheel. Surprisingly, it didn't bother me.

I still regard myself as a smoker, albeit a recovering smoker, and although I no longer take it one day at a time, I still set myself little targets. My present target is to get to six months. I don't think so much these days about the health workers, but I do sometimes think to myself, 'If he managed to give up, I'm darn sure I can!'

Here's to Day 118!