Smoke 'em if ya got 'em...

Its about damn time I wrote in here again.. I seem to be falling into my old patterns.

The one thing I MUST not fall back into is smoking. I'm feeling quite a bit better and with that comes the urge to smoke.. more and more. I have not succumbed yet but dammit... I can't understand why this is happening to me.

The physical addiction part should be long gone by now. They say that is past in 2 - 3 days.. Hell, I was in the House of Pain, unconcious for much of that time. I didn't even think about cigs till I had been home for about a week.

The last two days, I have finally been able to have wheels, get outside and drive some.. went to pick up a perscription yesterday and drove my wife to work this morning. Both times, I played the old familiar, "I'll buy a pack and just smoke two of them then throw them away" game... Just to see if I really want to smoke again, you see.

Thats how it starts.. Thats how I've restarted smoking the several times I've been able to quit over the years. I'll play that game 2 or 3 times then decide I'm wasting too much money, throwing away 4.00 packs of nearly full cigs.. that is then used to justify just keeping the next pack and then, next thing you know, its old smokey Joe again.

This is insane. I can't let it happen. I have fucking cancer.. you'd think that'd be enough to make ANYONE quit the fucking things.

I have a chance here to really turn my life around. Once I recover fully from the surgery, I should be able to get myself into pretty good shape. My weight is way down.. My heart is in great shape - I used to worry about my heart a lot, before all this.. I always figured that if anything was gonna get me, it would be heart disease. But much to my suprise, all my gym work and running on the Torture Device there (its like a ski simulater treadmill thing..) seems to have paid off. Several times, while I was in the House of Pain, after taking my heart rate, the nurses asked me if I was a runner - it seems my "at rest" heart rate is in the low 50's, which I guess is pretty good. I was amazed. The thought of someone mistaking me for a runner, a healthy person was almost funny to me at first.. Surely you don't mean ME? A runner?

Wow!

So, I will do my best to continue fighting the urge to smoke. I must. When will the shit just GO AWAY?