Sharing Tammy's story on national No Smoking Day

I started smoking when I was 11 years old, pinching a cigarette from my dad’s jacket pocket. It felt like a rebellious thing to do, and something all my friends were doing. But it was the start of an addiction that took me more than 40 years, and losing my Dad, to break. 

I’ve got five children, and I stopped during each pregnancy, as I was doing it for them, not for me. Each time I’d think, ‘right that’s me stopped’. But my heart wasn’t really in it, and it would only take a friend to offer me one, and I’d be back on them again.  

I knew it was harming me, everyone who smokes knows. But at the same time I was in denial, and thought ‘ah well that’ll happen to someone else”. And that was true. But the person it happened to was my dad. 

Dad and I were always really, really close, in fact as he got older, and his health got worse he came to live with me. He’d smoked his whole life, and was from the generation where it was the ‘norm’. He had lots of different health issues, which led to him having one of his legs amputated above the knee. But through it all, even though he was told not to, he kept smoking. 

He said to me ‘it’s too late for me Tammy, I can’t be dealing with cravings as well as everything else’. It’s gutting to see someone you love and look up to struggling so much, and Dad died at the age of 67 from sepsis.

We don’t know if smoking caused Dad’s death, but in my mind it was a big factor. And that gave me the push try and stop again. 

I reached out to SmokeFreeLife Berkshire, who sent me 8-weeks of patches, and called me every week to check and see how I was doing. I’m not going to lie, the first couple of weeks were hard, but between my family, work colleagues, friends, will power, and of course how proud I know my dad would have been, I’ve stayed stopped. 

As well as being able to go up and down the stairs without gasping for breath, it’s given me so much more confidence in myself. Eight months on, any time I’m wobbling about something I think, if you can pack in the smoking after all those years, you can do anything. And that’s a pretty good feeling.