Smoking Saved His Life

Smoking Saved His Life

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate smoking. I sell tobacco products as part of my living.  I take as many opportunities as possible to discourage people from smoking.  My father-in-law has COPD as does my wife, all because of smoking.

I have only heard of one case where smoking had a positive outcome. My father had been a smoker for many years. He had tried to quit several times and could not do it. We moved into our new house, which we called McClendon Manor, and had the task of remodeling it. In the house there was a sink that had major rust stains. My father decided to clean the rust out with Clorox. He scrubbed a good bit with it but the stain would not come out. We had some muriatic acid left over from cleaning the concrete at the Western Auto Store we were building. He poured some of that in the sink. Immediately a cloud appeared and filled the whole house.

We all went outside. My father started coughing and kept coughing. Later that evening, he was having trouble breathing and my mother took him to the emergency room. He was there all night. The doctor told him he had made a form of chlorine gas and it was highly lethal. In fact, the gas he had already inhaled should have eaten away his lungs. My father coughed up tar from his lungs for several days. It was determined that since he had been such a heavy smoker the tar build-up had protected his lungs from the acid.  In short, smoking saved his life.

Years later my father made up his mind to quit, and he did. He slammed a pack of cigarettes down on the counter and said, “Damn it, it’s not gonna beat me.” He never smoked again. 

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