Smoking not only damages your health, but can affect your income too.
Like many non smokers, I can smell a smoker at 20 paces. It’s not an unpleasant odour, it’s absolutely vile. Have you smokers ever considered this?
It is well known that, when approaching a new prospect, that first impressions count. As with many others, when considering the options for employing a tradesman/contractor, the smell of a smoker is a definite black mark. Are smokers aware that not only is the odour present on their breath, but on their clothes too? The smell also lingers in their homes and vehicles and it is carried into the homes of others. It is blazingly obvious when a person pops out to the van for a “quick smoke”. When they return, the mal-odour they bring back into the home is heightened. We non smokers can be outside and smell a smoker, who needn’t be “lit up”, up to at least 20 ft. away. This is no exaggeration.
The effects on your earning potential are obviously not the only problems associated with smoking. The bigger issue is your, and others, health and well being.
Last Wednesday, we laid my father to rest. He was 81 years old and had led an active and fulfilling life. He died from Lung Cancer. The doctors tell us that it was caused by smoking. Unusually, my father did not start smoking in his teen years, but as a mature adult. This may be significant in that his body had a chance to mature before being exposed to the thousands of chemicals present in tobacco smoke. I believe that about 30 to 40 of these chemicals are known carcinogens.
Smokers are well known for their “it wont happen to me” attitude. It probably will though.
Lung cancer is an evil way to die. There are different ways of dieing from this disease, but the outcome is always the same. For my father, it was a relatively short illness lasting about 4 months. Initially, he had a little chest congestion. Coughing wouldn’t clear it. Neither did antibiotics. Later it was discovered that he had also had pneumonia, the severity having being reduced significantly by a vaccination earlier in the winter. The coughing, the finer details of which I wont go into, gradually got worse. He was admitted to hospital and finally a hospice. Surgery and other treatments were not an option. The last 2 weeks of his life were without food. Tube feeding was tried, but this put a strain on his heart. He lost a lot of weight and his legs were unable to support his body weight. The cancer spread to his Lymph Nodes and then throughout the rest of his body. The Lymph Nodes swelled and put pressure on nerves which locked his head to one side and also caused his left arm to become swollen, paralysed and extremely painful. He was then put on a Morphine pump. We thought that he may have had a mini-stroke as his power of speech had diminished. But we were assured that this was not the case as the cancer had spread to parts of his brain. The worst and most distressing times were when, during his last week, my father’s gurgled breathing became a choking cough. He was drowning in the fluid in his lungs. During his final couple of days, he looked jaundiced, so we presumed that the cancer had spread to his liver. Comfortingly, his final passing was peaceful. It wasn’t that he died, he just stopped living in his sleep.
In some ways, my father and family have been lucky. His suffering was over a relatively short period and we all had the opportunity to say goodbye and prepare for the inevitable. Some are not so lucky. My Father-in-Law (a smoker) dropped dead from a heart attack. A dear friend has emphycema and struggles to walk from his lounge to bathroom and must avoid at all costs any emotional as well as physical stress. There are others with Bronchitis. Perhaps a Stroke which can be both a sudden death or a disabling condition.
I make no apologies for the above. I have always had a “Laissez Faire” attitude to smoking as far as the individual is concerned. I could appreciate why they find it difficult to give up, but couldn’t understand why they started in the first place. The reasons why people start smoking has no relevance to the reasons why they can’t give it up. Given my experiences above, I am now, more than ever, an anti-smoker.
Given that smoking can affect your businesses income, impose a financial/tax burden on your drawings, damage your health and, just as importantly, impose unbelievable emotional stress and financial burden on your family and loved ones, don’t you think it’s about time to make that extra special concerted effort to kick the habit?
Safe and happy living
Ken