Smoking blows

An uncle of mine will be going into the hospital early next week for an operation to help battle cancer. I'm told he will be having his jaw split so doctors can access the back of his tongue through the lower palatte. He will also be getting a tracheotomy, a swell little hole in his throat so he can breathe, though he'll have to cover it to utter any speech.

I got most of this information from another uncle who happens to live with him and my grandmother. "He'll be operated on Tuesday and dancing by Friday," he said. I began to hesitate in my speech when he said, in the sternest voice I ever heard from this otherwise very softspoken guy, "Ah, Jennifer, you don't have to spell it out. I'm just joking about the dancing, but that's what he thinks. You can't live your life the way he did and not expect to pay some kind of price."

This coming from an ex-smoker who quit the FIRST time his brother had a bout with smoking-related disease.

Yeah, the doctors will be operating on a 60+ year old man who has been smoking heavily for most of his life (I kinda recall him smoking unfiltered for years and years but I don't go around him when he sparks one up). He's also an alcoholic, albeit that term has never been used among each other, though no one would deny that he has a problem with the hooch. I've seen the guy drink a bottle of beer for breakfast. Seriously, his liver must look like a nubbly piece of leather.

I love the guy. Really, I do. And I respect him for all the things he has done, especially for my grandmother. But, as one of my sisters said, "His actions aren't of a man who wants to live."

And now I wonder what kind of life will he have left?

I'll tell you, I'm not going to bring my kids around to see him after the operation. Crap, one of my grandfathers had a tracheotomy, unbeknownst to me and my sisters. "Let's go visit Nannu," my parents said and, without any warning, we saw our grandpa with this gross hole in his throat and he talked like frickin' Darth Vader. Ewww.

Scarier was when he was sent back to the hospital, I saw another cancer patient with a trach smoking out of the hole in her throat. Nice.

And on a brighter note, my friend's husband has gone about a month without cigarettes. By forecasting the family's havoc that will ensue from this rather serious surgery next week, I can see that his decision to quit may save his kids from having to suffer, seeing daddy get sick and all. Quitting smoking? THAT is treading lightly through life.

A run-down on oral and throat cancers from a site my husband referred me to.