Don't wait

I grew up in a house of three kids and two smoking parents (chain smokers if I say so). My father smoked two packs a day and my mother smoked one pack a day. I am currently 39 years old and my mother recently passed away at 67 after a long battle with breast cancer, I am yet to recover from this massive loss. She also had thyroid cancer. 

There had been absolutely NO history of breast cancer on her side of the family until she contracted the disease in her fifties, had surgery and chemo, went into remission, and then was rediagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in her liver. My sister, at age 37, was diagnosed with breast cancer the October before my mother's recurrence. She became metastatic within a year and is now 41 years old with three children. 

As a result, I have had a preventative double mastectomy and I believe all of this loss in my immediate family is due to smoking exposure. There is some history on my father's side, however, it does not explain my mother's aggressive disease and premature death. 

As it stands, I will go through the horrific events cancer brings again (this time with my sister) and will be the only female left in my immediate family. My father, at age 75, and my brother, at age 36, and myself will be left without two fabulous women in our lives. I believe smoking and the tobacco industry either created the cancer outright or aggravated a gene in our family as research has suggested.

Without tobacco, my family would have much more time with my sister and my mother. My children would have gotten to know their grandmother better and wouldn't cry and wouldn't have to talk about missing her. I wouldn't have to worry about my sister's kids and neither would she. Please help stop the tobacco industry from destroying families.

More than 8 million lives has been saved since the anti-smoking campaign started in 1964 in US, not counting the effect it has had in other countries; now this is a huge number, although the number of smokers recorded nationwide especially in Bangladesh, Russia, Indonesia and China rose to 1billion, it could have been double this number if the anti-smoking campaign dint take place. 

In as much as these figures are encouraging, it is also not the time to relax and fold our hands, more work needs to be done to ensure that more lives are saved. We therefore need your contribution towards ensuring that the increasing rate of death caused by this preventable cause is brought to a halt.

All you need do is to PARTICIPATE in the TC RADIO CAMPAIGN and INVITE your FRIENDS & FAMILY to do the same as we all join hands in stopping this dilemma before it's too late. To subscribe: Text (TC Name Email Location Message) to 39405 as together we can make the change we desire.

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