Several made resolutions to stop smoking. Now would be a time when the urge to say, "To hell with it, I gotta have a cigarette.!" would be getting stronger, so I am doing my best to show what happens when you mess up your body by smoking. If you get an aneurysm you get it fixed or you die. This is a descending aorta aneurysm being repaired (that's when the aorta blows up like a balloon and if it breaks you are 'instantly' dead). It can be repaired if it is caught before it breaks. There is no pain – it is either found by a determined doctor or it breaks and you are dead.

If the doctor finds your aneurysm it must be repaired. It is a nasty operation. But, if you want to live you gotta pay a monumental price in agony and dollars to make it to whatever birthday you hope to reach (Recovering from this surgery is agony even with a Demerol drip in your spine).

After surgery I had breathing problems so I had to go to a lung specialist—thinking cancer. I was stunned—the lung specialist told me that only about 2% of smokers get lung cancer. The biggest killer, he told my wife and I, is heart disease; and that is what happened to me. And, the bottom half of both lungs were shot—from smoking. The top half was still working—I was lucky. Since I quit smoking before surgery and had no plans to resume, the lung doctor thought I might live something of a normal life. I didn't get out of the lung doctor's office "Scott-free."

I also have "emphysema with an asthma component" and I can't walk around the block in cold weather because I can't get my breath. I can suck on three different inhalers and take medicine and hope I make it and then die of old age. I am on oxygen all the time now and unable to do much for myself.

Smoking. Ah yes. I tell my wife all the time, "God, I wish I never started smoking."
I am telling you all of this just so you can stop smoking now and have a better future than you will if you continue on smoking tobacco.