Around 35 years ago, my mom tried her first cigarette. After that, she hasn't stopped. When she was pregnant with my siblings and I, she said she had no desire to smoke, so she never smoked while she was pregnant, but afterward, she always started again.
Fastforward 35 years and here we are. It's mid June and my dear mom is watching our kids while we are on our anniversary weekend getaway. She is sitting with the kids on her bed watching a movie when they start asking Mema if she had quit smoking yet (they, along with their cousins, Papa, and other family have been praying for her for years), and she said it is just so hard. She asked the kids to keep praying and to pray that God will help her want to quit. Our precious C, her very namesake, responded with, "Well, let's pray right now!" and she proceeded to pray for her Mema the way innocent and perfectly believing children can.
Something in Mema was triggered and she knew. She had promised my Dad that if her little M, then E, then C specifically asked her to stop smoking, that she would. Well, years kept going by and they did, but it is a habit far harder to quit than just with will alone.
Early July, Mom developes terrible bronchitis. She can't even go up or down the stairs. Walking to the bathroom is so hard she has to stop and try to breathe with all her might. She is using a nebulizer, Advair, anibiotics . . . I come over with the kids to spend the night at her house along with my sister and her children who are living with her before their move to Guam. Mom is in desperate straights. She, at one point, is laying over the bed struggling so hard to breathe, wheezing, coughing. She later tells us at one point she felt like someone had their hands around her neck and was choking her.
We go to the doctor and through a series of appts this is what she is diagnosed with:
Emphazema
COPD
various spots on her lungs
But, this is how wonderful the Lord is.
My mom had her last cigarette in early July when she got sick.
She got an MRI and CAT scans of her lungs and found out the spots were benign!!!!
She went to the pulmonologist and he basically told her there was a lot of mucous and but otherwise she is doing great!!!!
This was only a month or month and a half after quitting. This was such an amazing result, it was almost unbelievable. Emphazema: gone
COPD: gone
Wheezing and coughing: gone!!!!!
After all these years my mom has QUIT SMOKING!!! At one point, she went to bingo and told a friend that she is trying to quit smoking. The dear old lady told my mom, "No! you don't say that you are trying to quit smoking. You tell everyone you have quit smoking!" And that is what she says now, with confidence!
And now, she is going almost two months strong and we are all cheering her along. How proud of her we are.
I just don't know what I would do without my precious mom. She is pillar of Love for our entire family! All of her 13 grandkids just adore her. We praise the Lord so much for His helping her. My mom, for some reason, says that the moment C prayed for her right there on the spot, something powerful happened and she knew it was her time.
What a blessing and what an answer to years of prayers. Especially for my dad, who has been praying for her since the beginning of their relationship 33 years ago!!!
We love you, Mom!!!
