Quit Smoking

Interesting story came to me one day when I was searching for information associated with cancer and cigarette smoking. This is a story of a cancer survivor, so it’s even closer for me than you can imagine.

Rick Bender performed at Montana State University with his story in front of an audience of 30 people – students and academic staff. His story was about his struggle for life – he had got an aggressive for of mouth cancer.

According to his words Rick began using smokeless tobacco in the age of 12 because he wanted to be “a good old boy” for his friends. Then he though that spit tobacco will be much safer than smoking it, and this will underline his individuality, so he started to use Copenhagen snuff. In those times there was a heavy advertising of snuff on TV – star football players advised to use snuff instead of smoking tobacco.

The thing happened when Bender was only 26 years old – he suffered from painful sores on his tongue. According to doctor’s words the only thing they could do in order to save Rick’s life was part amputation of his tongue. By the way, till this time he was already using up to one can a day.

I am familiar with the way he had got to pass. Rick Bender underwent 12 hours of surgery and radiation therapy, and more surgeries. Besides loosing part of his tongue, his nerves were damaged during operation on his lymph nodes – his right arm suffered fro 25% move damage.

Rick’s story is enlightening like it is, but besides this Rich also added many other things – now he spreads his word about the threat that spit tobacco possesses – in schools, Indian reservations, universities and public houses. Every can contains as much nicotine as three or four packs of cigarettes and 28 cancer-causing chemicals, he said. Spit tobacco is connected with gum disease, mouth cancer, nicotine addiction, heart disease, stroke, throat cancer and other diseases.

Rick stresses that even nowadays tobacco advertising is too heavy, and billions are spent on popularizing tobacco use in the countries of 3-rd world: Africa, Asia. The main idea is – using chewing tobacco is not safer than smoking

So be aware too.