Many health insurance programs cover nicotine patches, that's in part how I quit, but it's not why I quit. I'm a nurse who smoked for 15+ years, then I did a rotation on a critical care unit...

I expected to see a lot of motor vehicle accident victims, you know, massive traumas, acute injuries and illness, well I was sadly mistaken. The majority of my patients were end stage COPDers... smokers in pharmacologically-paralyzed on mechanical ventilators, smokers with holes cut out of their tracheas, chest tubes draining fluid from their diseased lungs, lungs that could no longer simply exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. These smokers weren't elderly either, the ones that scared me most were the ones age 40-60. These patients scared the ever-living shit out of me because I always thought, well, smoking won't impact my life until I'm too old to really care, maybe I'll have to wear 2L of oxygen or something when I'm 75, big deal.

We know the risks, but most people never see the end-result, most people don't consider that smoking could land them in the hospital, with a machine breathing for them while their loved ones sleep cramped in a chair nearby. Most people don't think about the amount of maintenance and support they will need once their lungs can no longer perform air exchange, how do you clean your house? Or drive to the store? Or walk down the street if you can't even breathe sitting down?

The truth is, "75" isn't that old, the even scarier truth is that COPD, lung cancer and smoking induced cardiovascular disease typically doesn't even wait until you're 75 years "young" to destroy your life. I wish you all of the best and I hope that you can beat this, because your life is important, by the time you're ready to retire, you want to be able to enjoy it!