I have a patient on my schedule today who is a heavy smoker. Complaint: "Lungs are hurting."

[csziggy]

43. Almost forty years ago my mother in law lost 40% of a lung to cancer

But she still kept smoking. The f*cking doctor told her that her chain smoking since she was fifteen did not cause her lung cancer. She smoked up until she had to use oxygen constantly - even when she had to use it to move around.

We lost her in January 2017. She died a long and painful death from COPD. For the last three weeks of her life she suffocated since her lungs could not longer provide enough oxygen to keep her alive.

My husband was in the room when her pulse ox stats dropped below 50% and they performed an emergency intubation. he was traumatized since he thought she was dying in front of him. A few days later she was put into hospice care and passed less than twenty four hours after that.

I still want to go back and find the doctor that told her that smoking did not cause her lung cancer and kick his butt. I can never forgive him for that.