it's hard losing our furbabies.. especially the characters.
Good on you for sticking it out to quit smoking though. It's not easy.
My husband quit the night he had his heart attack. He told me when he was in ICU he was never going to smoke again. I was pretty sure it was the drugs talking but it wasn't. The last thing he remembered before the heart attack hit was taking a drag on a smoke.
Since I wasn't smoking, it was okay at home but really hard at the branch. He was used to having the beer and a smoke in hand. I didn't want him to stop going there as he needed that contact. I suggested he just take a smoke with him from the ones he had left and hold it. The idea was to simulate what he was used to until he'd broke the habit.
Problem was I had to almost beat off the rest of the guys. At that point he was very sick and the guys knew it. Lighting a smoke for him was something they could feel like they were doing for him. Eventually, they understood what he was doing and stopped trying to light it. It was understand or risk my wrath.
It is really hard to acknowledge, even when seriously ill.
Yeah, having the hands do something familiar like that might help, that was never my issue; my issue was I enjoyed it. But I think there is way more involved with me than the ciggies, since I worked on the roads I did a lot with asphalt grinders and tree work with chain saws and wood chippers, and have inhaled a lot of the dust which is physical and cannot be absorbed through the lung linings, so it never dissipates. I never thought about it nor worried about it at the time. All of the herbicide spraying we did was chemical, and can pass through the system, but the solids cannot, so I'm stuck with them.
yeah all of those will have had their impact. For me it was the dust in the pharmaceutical firm where I worked. It all builds up.