Tony Overman/The Olympian
Darrell Lay lights up a cigarette on his back porch as wife, Edie, looks on. Edie gave up smoking when she was diagnosed with lung cancer, but Darrell continues to smoke despite his chemotherapy for bladder cancer.

Still smoking

Despite the risks, some smokers won't -- or can't -- stop

JIM CARLILE, THE OLYMPIAN

Darrell Lay still smokes.

He's had his bladder, prostate and urethra removed because they were riddled with tumors. He's going through his second round of chemotherapy. And when he gets home from the hospital after a treatment and feels as if he's been hit by a truck, he immediately lights up a cigarette.

He's watched as his wife, Edie, now 57, was diagnosed with lung cancer when she was 40. She had three-quarters of a lung removed and quit smoking 17 years ago. But he still smokes.

"She has the willpower," he said. "I can't get off the damn things."

Darrell, 65, is unapologetic for his habit, though he knows all too well that it's slowly killing him. He can't quit, though. He has tried and failed and tried and failed again.

Whether they're too proud, too addicted or too weary to try quitting again, millions of people still smoke -- despite millions of dollars spent on anti-smoking campaigns.

And for anyone who likes to tell smokers what you think of their habit, here's some news: There probably isn't a single smoker in the country who thinks smoking is good for him. Smokers know what it does.

And they don't like to be hassled about smoking, whether they want to quit or not. But it happens to every smoker.

"I take issue with the people who stare, glare and say unkind things to us smokers when we are standing outside smoking. I've even had a perfect stranger come up to me and take the cigarette out of my mouth while cursing me!" said Jane Hartough of Olympia.

"If I approached a person who is overweight, glared at him or her and said, 'You need to eat less and exercise more,' I would be considered very offensive. Why do the anti-smokers think they are exempt?" she said. "Also, I love it when the same person who lectures me on air quality and lung impairment then climbs into his or her SUV that gets 12 miles per gallon."

Some smokers think we should applaud their habit, as Joe Tillman does. He has smoked since he was 34 and now, at 60, he admits he's sometimes short of breath when he goes hiking up mountains.

A pack-a-day smoker who smokes more than 30 years will live nine years less than the average person, Tillman said. Since you don't get Social Security until you're 65 and the average life span is about 72, that means most smokers will never draw Social Security from the national government, he reasons.

"Smokers should be given a medal," he said.

In need of nicotine

Nearly everyone knows smoking is bad. For some, however, not smoking is even worse.

"There are some things about smoking that most people don't know," said Hartough. "I have Crohn's disease, an incurable, chronic, debilitating disease with no known cure. In recent years, doctors in England have started using nicotine as a treatment for ulcerative colitis, a related disorder."

To put it briefly, smoking keeps Hartough relatively healthy. According to DrKoop.com, a health reference Web site, nicotine appears to have a protective effect against ulcerative colitis. The risk of developing the disease is particularly high for ex-smokers within the first two years of quitting.

Common symptoms of ulcerative colitis include rectal bleeding, diarrhea, abdominal pain and the urgent need to defecate.

"I have been near death from Crohn's three times in the last 27 years. Each time was within six months after I quit smoking," Hartough said. "I have three acquaintances who first became ill with either Crohn's or ulcerative colitis within a few months after quitting smoking. One almost died from internal hemorrhaging."

Nicotine gum and the patch are both ineffective, she said. The gum isn't strong enough, and the patch is too diluted when it passes through the skin and muscle tissue on the way to the blood system.

"I am trading the likelihood of lung cancer at some time in the future for the ability to lead a normal life now," Hartough said. "At any rate, I don't plan to quit smoking again until there is a cure for Crohn's."

A house divided

Outside the front door of the Lays' house off Yelm Highway is a sign informing people they can't smoke inside. On the inside of that same wall is a family portrait from when Darrell Lay had hair. The passage of time isn't what made the hair fall out, though. Chemotherapy did it.

Edie Lay is intimately familiar with physical and mental anguish as a result of cigarettes as well. She is deathly afraid of cigarette smoke, but her husband smokes. Doctors have cracked open her chest and removed a chunk of her lung that was rotten with cancer years ago, but she still remembers it vividly.

"I was diagnosed with cancer when I was 40," Edie said. She started smoking when she was 8 or 9 years old and didn't know it was bad for her until she was diagnosed in 1984 -- years after nursing her kids while smoking, which she is still furious about.

"It didn't seem real. I kept asking the doctor, 'Are you sure? Are you really sure it's from cigarettes?' I didn't want it to be from smoking because I didn't want to quit. I loved it," she said. "Finally, I decided that if I wanted to live, I'd have to change a few things."

So she quit. Edie hasn't put a cigarette to her lips since she had three-quarters of her lung removed in 1984.

Her doctors told her that if the cancer didn't come back in 10 years, chances are, it wouldn't come back at all. But 14 years later, it was back and was in a place doctors couldn't reach. Edie went through the radiation treatments that Darrell is going through now. He also started smoking when he was about 8.

"I started getting sick not long after she did," he said. "One time, I went to the bathroom ... and all of a sudden I couldn't go. I put some strain on it, you know, and it came out but it came out straight blood."

After that, Darrell said he was visiting the doctor every three months for several years only to find new tumors each time.

"It just kept getting worse. The doctor would find one here and find one there," he said. "In 1997, he said there was just too much cancer. He said, 'That's it,' and they took out my bladder, prostate and urethra.

"It's hard. Nobody wants to go out with a sack hanging out of you. It's hard," he said, referring to his urostomy bag.

But he still smokes.

Pleasure up in smoke

Edie and Darrell Lay traded in some of their favorite pursuits for a few years of smoking.

Edie has given up bowling. The sport isn't too strenuous, but bowling alleys are usually hazy with cigarette smoke. She also hasn't seen a lot of her old friends who still smoke because they feel guilty about smoking around her, she said.

"When I'm around smoke now, I just move away. I'm scared to death of it. It's caused so much pain. I just move away," she said.

Edie also is an avid slow-pitch softball player but can't play with the vigor that she used to. She still tries to get in an elk hunting trip or two every year, but Darrell said it's hard for him to do that now. The emphysema that he also got from smoking keeps him from doing a lot of things he used to enjoy.

He used to drive a logging truck but once the cancer started he wasn't able to. He can't ride his horse, can't chop wood and has started taking antidepressants.

"I see myself quitting one of these days, but right now, what's the use?" he said. He has tried to quit with nicotine gum once, twice with acupuncture, three times with the nicotine patch and countless times cold turkey.

"You quit for a day, though, and you're like this," he said and mimics jittery hands. "You get all upset and can't hardly function. No patience. You try for a while to quit smoking, then you just say to hell with it."

Edie and Darrell found out a while back that their 34-year-old daughter smokes. Neither of them wants to see her go through what they have been through. Edie said that in order to quit smoking, though, you have to do it for yourself -- something that Darrell will probably have to do to set an example for their daughter.

But for now, he still smokes.

Jim Carlile writes for The Olympian. He can be reached at 357-0204.

About this series

Today's story is the fourth in a six-week series about quitting smoking. Three Olympian staff members have decided to quit smoking and share their experiences each week of the process. The series also covers topics related to successful quitting.

-Week One: Quitting isn't the problem, it's staying cigarette-free.

-Week Two: Withdrawal symptoms.

-Last week: Teen smoking.

-This week: Lifetime smokers who persist despite health problems.

-Next week: The image of smoking in society.

-Sixth week: Free at last: Smokers who have quit for years share how they did it.

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