Child Abuse, Alcohol and Cancer

The summer before I got sick, I had been golfing three or four times a week, still doing my own housework, laundry and the shopping. I weighed 126   pounds. We had some family problems, but things were getting better. Now it was time to think about me.

I had been a smoker for more than 50 years and I had known for a couple of years that I had nodules on my lungs. Dreadfully afraid of cancer, I decided it was time to go face the music and see what was going on with my lungs.

I went for a pulmonary function test and the result of that was that I have asthmatic bronchitis and I was given prescriptions for Serevent and for a rescue inhaler. So far, so good, no cancer. I wasn’t sure how that could be determined with a pulmonary function test, but I was elated thinking I was ok. Heck, asthmatic bronchitis sounded like the very least of the evils. That was in late September. By Christmas I was feeling so fatigued that I couldn’t do any Christmas shopping.  We decided to give everyone money that year.

We left right after the holidays to spend a couple of winter months in Ft. Myers, as we had been doing since my husband retired. On the trip down, I was too tired to get out of the car for anything but going to the bathroom. We ate all of our meals from drive in windows. Ordinarily, we would stop at favorite restaurants and I was always looking for souvenirs to bring back for the kids. We always stopped at favorite places to buy pecans and candies. One of our favorite things to do was to leave the motel room before dawn and watch the sun come up. We took a lot of pictures in Kentucky, Tennessee and southern Ohio. On this trip, we could do none of that. For our evening meal, after we checked in to a motel, my husband would go find a restaurant and get carry out. I was so short of breath I could do very little walking.

By the time we got to Fort Myers, I was having excruciating pain in my left arm. At first I thought it might have been the way I was sitting in the car. It continued to get worse and we were buying all kinds of over the counter rubs and ointments. I was taking 12 extra strength Tylenol a day. As for the breathing, I felt that that is what happens with asthma.