Radical Chemo. Thomas Mahon
Bird came over the house with Aunt Bee (his second wife). I remember lounging on my parents’ bed watching Hee Haw on the black and white Zenith. Aunt Bee and my mother slipped into the bedroom and shut the door. I glanced up from the television. Bee inhaled, looked my mother straight in the face and said, “Toni, your father has cancer.” My mother covered her mouth and began to cry.
Up until that time, I had only seen my mother cry one other time. What a surreal feeling.
Granddaddy Bird had lung cancer. I know my story isn’t unique by any stretch of the imagination; this scene is played out daily in homes across the United States and beyond. But the reality of cancer is never quite real, I’ve found, until it hits your home and your family. Yes, my grandfather smoked. In fact, according to my mother, he started fiddling around with cigarettes when he was nine. And since he was now sixty-one, that made him a fifty-year smoker.
That’s a half-century love affair with nicotine.
Granddaddy Bird threw away his cigarettes. Aunt Bee, who also smoked, kicked the habit as well. He began seeing a specialist. He endured the rounds of chemotherapy, as well as the associated nausea. Though Granddaddy Bird never did lose his hair, he eventually needed the assistance of a cane. He had to have his gall bladder removed a few months later, but he quickly recovered from the surgery. I often sift through the old family albums, and marvel at how good he actually looks in many of the pictures taken in 1975: Father’s Day in June and my sister’s birthday in August.
One day, my father paid him a visit at the house. It wasn’t until I was in college that Dad told me what transpired that day. “I’ve never told your mother this. I don’t want to upset her.” Dad said that, at one point in their visit, Granddaddy Bird dropped to his hands and knees in the middle of the living room and began pounding his fists into the carpet. “ISN’T THERE ANY HOPE FOR ME? ANY HOPE AT ALL?”
I’ve never had the heart to tell my mother, and I pray that when she reads this she’ll understand.
We rolled through fall, finally arriving at Thanksgiving. Our family went to Granddaddy Bird’s house for dinner, but I can recall very little of that afternoon and evening. I know one thing, however: he is not present in any of the photographs taken that day. He was too sick to leave the bedroom.
Mom and Dad made an extraordinary effort to make Christmas of 1975 merry and upbeat for my sister and me. Exactly a year after Granddaddy Bird assured my mother he would see a doctor after the holidays, he sat in our living room looking gaunt, ashen and exhausted. I can still see him coughing up wads of phlegm into a paper towel. To be honest with you, I’m surprised he managed to make the twenty-minute trip to our house that morning. Somehow Aunt Bee, who was now nursing him, bathing him and wiping him after he went to the bathroom, managed to get him dressed and into the car.
I went to bed on December 29th knowing that time was short. While my sister and I slept, my parents received an urgent call from Aunt Bee. Granddaddy Bird was cycling into his final descent. You’d better get over here fast, Bee urged. They rushed him to Palmetto General. By the time my parents arrived, there wasn’t much time. My father went back to see him, and administered a blessing using his crucifix.
And then Granddaddy Bird’s lungs gave out.
My father went back in to officially identify his body. Dad later told me what an incredibly relieved look Granddaddy Bird had on his face as he lay lifeless on the table. He would finally get some peace after a year of hell.
A Word About Smoking…If I May
Right about now, I’m struggling for something intelligent to say to my students. They’re fairly moved by the story of Granddaddy Bird. I’ve made my point. The kids are getting a glimpse of my human side, which is a good thing. They sense that I’m still bothered by my grandfather’s death despite all the water that’s gone under the bridge. I’m in my forties now, I tell them. And what irks me is this: Granddaddy died so long ago (I was eleven at the time) and he was so relatively young (sixty-two-years old) that if he were alive today, he’d be in his nineties. Not completely beyond realm of possibility. I’m not telling them something like my grandfather would be 115 years-old today. He really could be alive today. Of course, could just doesn’t cut it. Could isn’t going to get it done. JFK could be alive today if it had been raining in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
I look at my students. They look back at me. Okay, so what now? Should I begin to spit forth a litany of smoking factoids? The American Cancer Society has some eye-openers.
Nearly 440,000 Americans die each year from tobacco use. At least 1 in 5 deaths in the U.S. is related to smoking. And cigarettes kill more people than alcohol, car accidents, AIDS, homicide and illegal drugs combined.4
My students politely jot down the information as if to say, Fine. No problem. Anything else we should know? There are no gasps of horror. Nobody cringes. I get a few raised eyebrows when I tell them that, according to the CDC, men who smoke eliminate an average of 13.2 years off their life span, while women lose 14.5 years.5 I also catch their attention with this one: 75% of people who smoked each day in high school were still smoking almost a decade later, even though they had brazenly predicted, back in the day, that they would eventually quit. Then I drift off and begin to mutter to myself. “Cigarette smokers are an odd lot,” I say. “I don’t get them but, then again, maybe I just don’t get drug users in general.”
My students begin to glance at one another. Now what’s he babbling about?
Well, for one, smokers are doing something everyone knows is dangerous—real dangerous. Yet they don’t stop. It’s like handling a deadly cobra every day. You may have a license from the state to own an exotic serpent, but you run the risk of the damn thing biting you. And when you do get bit, you’re most likely done. Just look at Peter Jennings, former ABC News anchor. Dead four months after telling the world of his affliction. If you smoke, you’ll face one, perhaps even two cancers. First, you’ll have to deal with justifications. Finally, you may ultimately grapple with lung cancer. But never forget which cancer started the whole ordeal.
The High Cost of Smoking
Cigarette smokers, especially those in the lower socio-economic groups, are draining their bank accounts (as drug users will do) at alarming rates. This brings up the issue of cost. One of our teachers just informed me that he pays over $6 for a pack of cigarettes—including all the new federal excise taxes— but a pack would probably run him a cool $12 in New York City. Smokers pay more for insurance. Their cars and homes tend to lose money on resale. They pay more at the dentist. More and more employers are refusing to hire smokers; some require prospective employees to sign non-smoking affidavits. It’s funny and poignant how frequently smokers leave their work areas to get a quick fix of their drug. Whether in small groups or alone, these smokers slouch, stand or pace in alleyways, behind dumpsters, on the front steps of buildings, under trees, on sidewalks, all the while blowing their smoke and flicking their ashes into the breeze. Just calculate the loss in man-hours, the loss in production. Imagine demanding a ten-minute break to guzzle some whisky or shoot up a little heroin. Imagine the following request: Hey boss, I must leave my desk on occasion, for ten minutes, to stand outside and stare at the clouds. Then I’ll return to my work. However, I’ll start to get fidgety after an hour and I’ll need to run outside again. This will happen each and every day I ever work for you. I just wanted you to know that upfront. I know my smoking friends won’t find that amusing, but my students sure do. I continue. I see smokers dangling cigarettes out their car windows, carefully blowing their smoke into the clean air. One of my former students, I tell them, came by to see me recently. I asked her if she still lit up. She nodded her head. “But we have an agreement in our apartment. We can only smoke outside on the porch. None of us wants the smoke getting into the carpet or the drapes.” Great, I say. Save the carpet and drapes, but go ahead and pollute your lungs. “Oh, stop it,” she said, nudging me.
Many smokers, especially the hardcore addicts, walk around like tightly wound toy robots. I have two explanations for this, I tell my students.