I grew up in a small home where both my parents smoked. My aunts, uncles and grandmother, who spent lots of time at our house each week, also smoked. My brother and I both suffered frequent bouts of pneumonia and bronchitis-I was hospitalized once with pneumonia and my brother was hospitalized several times for both.  I am certain now that secondhand smoke exposure was to blame for both of our chronic illnesses. I can still remember how worried my parents were each time one of us began coughing. They did everything they knew of to keep us healthy. But back then, no one gave a thought to secondhand smoke. They had no idea that they and the other adults in our lives were jeopardizing our health each time they lit up. If they had, I’d like to believe they would have smoked outside.

I can still picture my Aunt Kay doing water aerobics in the pool in her Florida backyard. She’d do a few leg lifts on her right side, then reach for the Kool Light cigarette burning in the ashtray alongside the pool. She’d take a long, slow drag, set the cigarette back down, and then work the other side. My aunt smoked Kools for more than 20 years–right up until the day she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1994. She died six months later, just shy of her 52nd birthday. Though the cancer started in her lungs, it soon spread to her spine where it was carried by spinal fluid to her brain. By the time she died, she was paralyzed and blind. She drifted in and out of consiousness during her final weeks of life. She spent her waking moments telling of the dreams that haunted her sleep–dreams of walks that would never be and of the volcanic ash she’d breathed in on her trip to Alaska two years earlier during the eruption of Mt. Spur, ash she was certain caused her cancer. For though she accepted her doctor’s advice and gave up smoking at the time of her diagnosis, she never acknowledged the role her beloved Kools played in ending her life. After all, she rationalized, the cigarettes she smoked were lights–the healthier choice. My Aunt Kay was one of the strongest, most intelligent women I’ve ever known, yet even she had been duped by tobacco marketing. She battled her cancer and the notion that it was preventable until the bitter end.

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