Smoking kills quicker that first expected

**NickFitz** · 8 August 2014, 13:47

He wasn't smoking. If he had been, he wouldn't be dead

**NickFitz** · 8 August 2014, 18:19

Originally posted by zeitghost

Oddly, there was a programme on R4 yesterday about the ethics of supplying oxygen to people with CPOD who smoked.

One of them managed to set himself on fire.

When I worked for Age Concern in the Eighties, there was an old chap I visited who used oxygen. He just sat there in his armchair, pretty much unable to get up (I never saw him do so), smoking. When he finished a fag he'd fumble for his oxygen mask and put it on, and breathe stertorously for a couple of minutes. Then he'd take it off again and light another fag. His fags and lighters were piled up next to him on one side of his chair (his daughter brought fresh supplies every couple of days) and his oxygen bottle on the other side.

He once dropped a lighter down the side of his chair, between his leg and the arm, while I was there. He didn't have the strength to shift himself enough in his chair to pick it up, which was when I realised why there were always about a dozen of them next to his stack of fag packets.

I don't think he ever said more than about three words to me during the half-hour or so I'd spend with him; even catching enough breath to speak was an epic struggle for him.

He died a few months after I first met him. IIRC he was about 80.

Smoking kills quicker that first expected