Hard Reality as Motivation: Effects of Smoking

Day Two: three cigarettes

Yesterday, I mentioned that smoking can cause cervical cancer when combined with HPV. Today, I'm doing research on how smoking effects different organs, and how deadly it can be when combined with certain ailments. Findings will be posted later.

Right now, I have to take a moment to be happy, at the risk of over-sharing personal information. I received a letter from the clinic I went to a couple weeks ago for my annual pap smear. Although I was confident I wouldn't get a call about the STD tests results, I was sure I'd get a letter, much like letters in the past, with the box next to "abnormal cells" checked, HPV written in the "possible cause" line, followed by a recommendation for a colposcopy appointment. Twice I've received this kind of letter, and the first time, I did get a colposcopy, which confirmed HPV. The second time, I didn't bother, because I figure cutting pieces out of my cervix, causing scar tissue, isn't going to make anything any better.
Third time's a charm, I suppose, because everything came back normal. Doctors at multiple clinics and hospitals over the years have told me that pap smears have only recently become standard annual exams for women twenty-one and over. This is because younger women were getting "abnormal" results, which became normal within five years. I don't know if it's just the body maturing or they really did have HPV and it went away (doing research on HPV, many sources have claimed that a good portion of people in their late teens to early twenties get rid of it within five to ten years on their own). Even the CDC states that "In most cases, HPV goes away by itself."
In researching HPV, I also found that there a many different types of the virus, about forty of which infect the genitals. Interestingly, these same strains can infect the mouth and throat, which is where smoking comes back around. The same CDC page states that 1,700 women in the U.S. get oropharyngeal cancer each year (6,700 men), and that smoking as well as HPV contribute to these numbers.

So now that I'm virus-free, all I have to do is quit smoking to keep myself from adding to these numbers.

As if I need more reason to quit:

I don't know much about my family history. I know my great uncle died of lung cancer when he hadn't smoked a day in his life. I'm sure it was from asbestos and lead-based paint from the work that he did. The only things I really feel I have to worry about come from the side of my family that I took the most DNA from: my mother's. Dementia, skin cancer, and polycythemia all run in her family. I don't think I can do much about the dementia or the skin cancer. I love the sun too much to avoid it. But being at risk of developing polycythemia should be enough to motivate anyone to quit smoking. This blood disorder thickens the blood, increasing risk of stroke, peptic ulcers, and gout; my grandmother has had three strokes within five years due to her condition. With smoking shitting on the blood vessels already, I'm pretty much asking for polycythemia, and blood clots. And a shitty death.

The more I look, the more reasons I find to stay away from cigarettes. Cold hard facts like these are much more effective than tactics I saw in school, in the D.A.R.E. program. Maybe they were just too cheesy, maybe I was too spacey to pay attention, but I don't remember anything about real life medical problems. What's cancer to a ten year old? Maybe having real life shit happen to me, or my friends or family, makes it more real. It's not something that happens to other people in another reality, far far away.