why cigarettes are bad.

mr H, a 61-year-old ex-rubber tapper used to work from sunrise till late afternoon tapping, collecting & selling latex in his smallholding business. he looked after his family well, so well that he has 2 - wives & respective families, that is. although no stranger to hard labour, his only vice seemed to be smoking 2 packs a day of them bad boys for the last 40 years. well, this has come back to haunt him. it's called chronic obstructive airway disease, or COAD for short.

13 years ago, he was admitted to hospital for breathing difficulty & the chest xray revealed...

...an infection in the right lung. the infective process compounded by damage due to years of smoking resulted in mr H suffering from recurrent chest ailments. each time he recovered with a course of antibiotics, bronchodilators & steroids but this recent attack 3 weeks back must have been the last straw.

although the chest xray actually looked better than previous ones, he didn't improve with the usual medications, & needed to be put on a ventilator...

- he was persistently out of breath, as if he had just completed long-distance running.

efforts to take him off the ventilator proved futile, so the next step was to create a little hole in his windpipe (tracheostomy)...

which helps him breathe easier & facilitate nursing care as well. with this, he took a whole week to improve & even then, it was with a little help from this BIPAP device...

...a compact piece of equipment that bridges the recovery process between total dependence on a ventilator & being able to breath without aid.

today, he's breathing on his own with the tracheostomy tube still in place. he will be transferred to a hospital-based nursing home where the tube will eventually be removed.

3 weeks in ICU with a barrage of tests, procedures & medication, i hope the bill doesn't trigger another attack....