Dear editor:
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Twenty years or so ago I met Mrs. S. As the old saying goes, “we hit it off,” in an immediate liking of one another. It was my first contact as a chaplain with a person with lung cancer. She was in her late fifties. One lung had been surgically removed. She still could not stop smoking cigarettes. In addition to her physical suffering with cancer, and the unshakable anxiety related to her mortality, she was in constant conflict with her husband. They loved one another. She still smoked. He admonished and pleaded with her. She still smoked. She tried hypnosis. Still, two packs a day. She and I talked out everything she could feel and think. Prayers to God for strength to stop. Other professional counseling. To no avail.
Sometime during the last twenty years I lost count of the number of people I had the honor and privilege to be with in their dying. Still, every one of them whose path to the grave was shortened because of tobacco increased my rage at the tobacco industry. And my rage at our society which allows this industry to flourish.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
