Ok can I just make a wee comment we all have cancer cells and diofferent things trigger them in the case of breast cancer its hormones so ciggies dont make a difference to that but it would make a difference to other kinds
Joanne
Well said Joanne. I have some friends who have commented on the fact that I am still smoking - to be fair none of them have been OTT and none have intimiated that my smoking caused the breast cancer, but the common questions is ‘did the breast cancer not scare you into stopping so that you have a better chance of avoiding lung cancer?’ or words to that effect.
I suppose to a degree the fact that I’ve had a taste of cancer and not liked it one little bit has made me sit up and think about the risk I am taking. I know I will stop smoking and I know it will be for me, not others. It’s just a matter of timing and today is not the day.
JillyH
Please don’t beat yourself up too much about your lifestyle - everyone has their demons and reasons for dealing with them as they do. I confess to drinking way too much before dx and had done for 10 years + but just prior to dx I’d decided to try to get it in hand. I found a website with forums just like BCC where you can be as open as you like about your relationship with alcohol or say nothing at all - just reading the threads showed me I wasn’t alone. The other users on the site are non-judgemental just very supportive whether you want to quit or just cut down to safer levels. They also mention Alan Carr’s How to Stop Drinking book which I know has helped lots of people. If you would like to PM me I can give you the website address. I’ve managed to stay at 14 units a week now since the end of March - much of it down to the support of the website. As other ladies have said, one thing at a time - concentrate on beating BC for now, your lifestyle changes can wait a little longer.
Stay strong.
Claire xx
Hi Jilly and everyone
Jilly, as a nurse, you must have had patients that have smoked/drunk too much etc. When they have just been diagnosed with cancer, I don’t think you would be too harsh on them in terms of persuading them to adopt healthier living. Now is not the time to make big changes to your lifestyle that you would struggle to keep. You are enduring a terribly stressful time at the moment and to try to quit smoking/drinking right at the moment would almost certainly fail. You would then be more stressed out. We are all blatantly aware that smoking and drinking too much and eating crap and not doing exercise is not good for us, but we still do although we are intelligent and knowledgable. Why? because we are human and we don’t always get it right. Unless you are an alcoholic and alcohol is seriously affecting your life, if I was you, I wouldn’t worry too much about smoking or drinking right now. If you want to do something healthy, do something you know you will find easier to achieve like healthier eating etc and leave the biggies like smoking/drinking until you are more on an even keel. As someone said, no-one is certain why we get breast cancer so be nice to yourself at the moment.
Hi everyone
Am so glad i found this thread I too am a smoker and feel guilty about it, luckily friends and family havent put pressure on me but I have found that now we all have to smoke outside if we go to the pub (which I do every weekend) I wonder how many people think “serves her right” yet they dont bat an eyelid cos we’re having alcohol!
I also know several people who have had cancer and never smoked, as one person said its a lottery as to who gets it, just our luck it was this lottery we “won”!!
Vertangie I too am a cumbrian (west) and am having my treatment at Carlisle where I think they are marvellous!
Helen xx
I have just been looking at the NHS directline web site re exercising and to my amazement it states that a person who doesn’t exercise is at the same risk health wise as a smoker!
Please help me with this one ladies…do you know if I could be refused a reconstruction because I smoke. I dread being told this.
Margaret
Oh Margaret, I do hope not. I’m so glad I started this thread because so many of you lovely people have made me feel better. I don’t seem to know many smokers these days and had convinced myself I wouldn’t even get through the first anaesthetic. Thank you all, it’s great not to feel alone. I hope someone can reassure you Margaret.
Love Jillyh
Another smoker…I remember when I was dx my first words were…‘’ oh my god and I smoke ‘’…consultant said…‘’ now is not the time to give up, just try to cut down before surgery because of anaesthetic…didn’t do very well on that score either!!..I was honest with anaesthetist [spelling] about smoking…so would advice anyone else to be honest too.
When starting my chemo’ I was also told not to try and give up smoking as it was too stressful a time…I did cut down to about 4 a day when having chemo’…but I am ashamed to say I soon began smoking more…and am still on 15 a day…did start taking Champix in March and was doing very well…then had to have another FNA…and started smoking more again whilst waiting for results [were ok by the way].
Don’t beat yourself up about drinking or smoking.
karen x
Well personally, I don’t give a sh**. I’m 50, I’ve smoked since I was 15 (minus 18 months of pre-preg, preg & breast-feeding - then catch the flimsy tab in the thumbnail, pull it, pick out the fag & hey! this is good!) & currently smoke between 5 & 10 per day though I’ve felt a bit ambivalent about it for a few years. After diagnosis I looked at the habit, & me in the habit, and I thought: hell! I LIKE smoking. It’s my thinking time. As for drinking. I like that too. In fact, I love it. I’ve drunk my way around the globe - comparing rums in the Caribbean, wines in Australia, France & Spain, vodkas in eastern Europe, beer all over; complaining noisily about rice wine in Bali; laughing that Coke cost more than generic ‘brandy’ at Annapurna base camp (lucky, thought I, who never touches the stuff - Coke that is); swigging from bottles of homebrew with locals at cockfights in Martinique or Ecuador; necking with lovers present or potential over good food and good booze from here all the way back to when life started.
As far as I’m concerned - life without these pleasures? Hah! I’d rather be dead. Sure, I’ve cut intake during chemo because it makes me feel worse - and besides, life is temporarily on hold so who cares about minor deprivations? I am making no travel plans either - which actually hurts more. But I don’t care if my life choices are responsible for shortening that life - they are mine; IT is mine & I’ll do with it as I choose. I never was, nor wanted to be, someone who put breathing before living - and while I’m long past the ‘live fast, die pretty’ stage - I raise my drinking fist to the sentiment. And thank you, the Finnish health system, for being there to clean up the mess.
I chemo-fart in the general direction of killjoys, wowsers and their ilk the world over.
Hi
Iam going for a double mastectomy and reconstruction next year once all the treatment is finished my choice and my doc has agreed to this he has never once mentioned my smoking even when I had my lumpectomy I think thses doctors know the enormous burden we have and dont like to add to it. I get more from him about getting my coil removed as its hormone based so I guess that a bonus .
Joanne
Jilly
You have just made my day…I too am a smoker and I have been debating about starting a thread about it but felt so ashamed and guilty…thought everyone would slate me.
I am so relieved that I am not alone on the smoking front. It is really hard as stress = cigarette for me and we all know about the stress side of it!
Thank you everyone for your honesty, I want to give up, but until I do I will not beat myself up about it now.
Love Hayley x
Hey Hayley - I wouldn’t worry about people slating you here for smoking. Those that do smoke & drink, like me, say and think much as you do; and those that don’t, can feel ever so chuffed that our habits might just help us to fill the part of the statistics we’d all rather avoid. Because, with the best will and intentions in the world - if I don’t fill the spot, someone else has to; and who’s doing what, that might put them there in front of me?
Now you’ll think I’m awful…
Actually I forgot to mention this but just after my op when I was drinking a little too much and beating myself up over it my someone pointed out that 500mg paracetemol are just as hard, if not harder on your liver than a nice glass of red wine and the wine was helping me relax and as such relieve the discomfort much better that the pain killers were so may have been the better choice.
So it’s no good comparing our bad habits to those of an ideal person because that person would basically have to be frozen in time, eg not eating anything (almost everything’s sort of contaminated with something, after all we have background radiation don’t we)
Lets not be too hard on ourselves - I don’t smoke, have one or two small glasses of wine a week and like you all got breast cancer, I’m also a vegetarian and love walking.
It’s so easy to play the blame game isn’t It? If only…
M x
Thank you all so much, ladies, for being so honest. Emelle, your post above is brilliant and made me laugh out loud. Chemo-fart hahaha. An ordinary fart’s bad enough but a chemo one, well, hahaha.
I may have said earlier that I don’t smoke, never have. BUT I do drink too much. Like most on here, I’m an evening drinker. Didn’t drink much during chemo because everything tasted horrible, but since last May it’s gone up and up and up and I don’t seem to be able to control it. My drinking lasts about three hours and in that time I manage to knock back between half and three-quarters of a bottle of Gordons gin. I used to be able to have a couple of alcohol-free evenings and it was easy to do, but not now. I rarely have an alcohol-free evening, and most nights I can’t remember going to bed 
I’m usually sluggish next morning and I’ve told myself it’s because of my condition, but I know it’s not and it’s due to the drink. I hate myself for it. I’ve considered AA but I LOVE the taste of the gin and tonic. That’s all I drink. Some nights when I’ve just had two or three drinks, I wake up next day feeling so much better that I tell myself that’s all I’ll have tonight, but tonight comes and I’m back to half/three-quarters of a bottle again.
I really, really need a wake-up call here.
Good luck to us all.
xx
Hi there Granny S - I’ve come across your posts before and found them a laugh, so I’m glad you got a giggle out of mine. I know it’s a bit off to say, but sometimes I find my own nastiness funny as well.
You’ve got an expensive habit, dear. What brand of gin? And do you drink slim-line tonic or the full monty? Which might sound insensitive but I’m hooked on these kinds of details - it’s my trade.
You know, if getting blotto is essential to you, it might be easier to come to terms with it than kick the habit and turn into a bore. It mightn’t kill you - the world’s a violent place and wouldn’t it be irritating to give up your favourite pastime and then get mugged & die in hideous agony at the hands of unbridled youf? On the other hand, it doesn’t sound like you are in the frame of mind to decide to simply enjoy what you don’t feel up to changing - so perhaps the ‘up to’ part does, in fact, need to be examined.
I’m an enthusiastic drinker myself - and there have been periods when I have probably equalled your impressive track record. I look back on them and they were all times when I found life so bloody dull I couldn’t stand it sober. Waiting times between life projects and so on, when domesticity was all there was to do in the evening along with watching some beastly popular vid of husband’s choice. The only thing that would stop me opening my second bottle of wine would be if something had delayed me starting on the first until after about 6. I’m not a social drinker. I like to drink in my own little world; I never get drunk when there is something more interesting - like chat - to do. My friends never see me drunk & the OH probably doesn’t notice, though we’ve never discussed it. So: I usually let it run for a while and then get tired of the - as you so elegantly put it - ‘sluggishness’ in the morning. Then I go dry 5 days a week. Promise myself one helluva bender on Friday & Saturday night - or preferably when the OH is away. And fulfil the promise.
The thing is, after the first, obligatory purgatory of living through a couple of days of hangover (instead of staunching it with the happy pop of a cork being pulled), life suddenly takes on clearer colours and sounds and the crap cycle takes a minor, but important blow. This means that those interesting things you dream about doing on the 4th drink and then forget about - organising a photo album, researching your family tree, taking up pole dancing - actually become a possibility within reach. Especially if you have a convenient pole. This is the way I’ve come through some damaging times - and it’s been a while since I’ve been where you are. But I’ve been there. And the ways back that I fell into, quite accidentally, are not for everyone - but I have pretty odd interests. I did a curative 4 years doing a PhD - rummaging around in English archives instead of making dinner in the suburbs of Helsinki - all (student-style) expenses paid. Y’can’t get blotto and assemble a mountain of transcripts and if you find the transcripts fascinating then the thought of getting blotto doesn’t pop up.
Give it a try. Clear the house of booze - hell! drink it! - then keep yourself very, very busy for three days while you get over the hangover, then sit down and think a bit. Go to an AA meeting if you think you have any doubt at all about whether it might be useful. Not for me - I couldn’t bear to give up drinking altogether, it’s part of who I am; and all that quasi superstitious nonsense they go on with - I’d as soon go to a faith healer. No. I’d much rather go to a faith healer. Bound to be more interesting. I haven’t heard anyone recommend the M-L method of abstinence coupled with social drinking (as I said, this is not a prob for me - I don’t like to feel mentally challenged in company and a glass of good wine with food doesn’t tempt me to lunge across the table and up-end the bottle into my gaping maw), and the occasional binge. But I like it.
Love yourself, Gran. If it means loving a heavy drinker - well love yourself anyway.
And love from here as well. M-L xx
so i smoke too - because there are no laws in virtual we have a smoking bar at the Dew Drop Inn - the onlt rule is you may have to come back because sometimes everyone is asleep.
So I smoke, drink red wine… emelle is right re saying to aneasthetist …spelling… hmm that you smoke but my bloke was a complete pooh…was stroppy re surgeon having said to me - don’t go under till i see you.
sugeon was delayed… anaeth got stroppy which made me cross and he goes in my face ‘you are high risk patient because you smoke and you are questioning me???’ errr no surgeon said… but actually… if you want to be a ratbag… and i was difficult back - the nurses were cackling but said he is v good. surgeon walzs in…sorry…emergency. i just wanted to say that you will be fine but i i know you smoke so no point putting you under till we have to, young actaully quite fit, you’ll be fine… anaet spitting feathers.
chemo… the wonderful prof grieve says ach smoking - we will encourage you later…
to smoke?
am laughing
do what we need to do to get thru the bits we are doing. don’t feel guilty
we can stop smoking, drinking, eating too much later. JUST GET THROUGH IT!
take care j xx
I’m sure I’ve read of other ladies on here who have carried on smoking and not been refused reconstruction, although I was told, at diagnosis, that the plastic surgeon might not be willing to perform reconstructive surgery on a smoker. Was told that as well as possible problems of being under anaesthetic for several hours, there is a greater chance of skin flap failure if you smoke. I smoked the rest of my packet that evening, and next day invested in nicotine gum. Was surprised that, despite the stress of everything, I didn’t find it that difficult (have given up many times before and started again), when had reconstruction as an incentive. Have stayed off the cigs ever since. Mind you, it took a while to give up the nicotine gum…
This thread is brilliant.
I use to smoke 20 daily until 14 yrs ago and gave it up for me but got stuck on nicotine gum for ages and now off that too, but the day I was diagnosed all I wanted was a fag! Oh please let me have one, but with no-one willing to buy some and no friends that now smoke I didn’t fold into temptation.
No one has ever asked about my drinking habits - wine every night and enjoy it.
So what if others disapprove, we are all in the same boat and no need to judge! Get by the best way we know how!
You would be stunned at home many doctors and nurses smoke… and I do mean stunned. I was talking to a few of them about how I’d managed to quit 3 days pre op and they confessed. I don’t think health really makes you quit. All the ads about how we’re damaging ourselves etc are really preaching to the converted as it is actually a drug addiction, that’s what a lot of Alan Carrs book is about, ie what we’ve come to believe about smoking. I didn’t expect it to work I just found it an interesting read to start with. But that’s another thing altogether let’s just say most nicotine replacements are no replacement… it’s still nicotine! One of my GP’s has been addicted to the gum for 14 years, he said I was right to have avoided it.