Reprinted with permission,
Courtesy, Asbury Park Press, a Gannett Co. newspaper.
BY
MICHAEL RILEY
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
|
.
, - It "stinks" to
be a smoker these days.
That's the assessment of Connie Greene, director of Saint Barnabas
Health Care System's Behavioral Health Network's Institute for
Prevention.
"Think about it," the certified addiction specialist says. "You
work in a high-rise, no-smoking building, and you've got to put
on your coat, take an elevator, walk outside in the rain or snow
to take care of your addiction. It's hard to be a smoker."
And it's about to get tougher. Come Saturday, a new state law
takes effect, banning smoking from all bars and restaurants.
Smoking is not just an inconvenient and expensive habit. It's
a deadly addiction that can lead to heart disease, emphysema
and lung cancer. Many people know this and have successfully
beat the addiction.
"The percentage of people who smoke has been steadily declining," Greene
says. "What we're left with are the most severely addicted."
But there's hope for even hard-core smokers. Greene, whose office
is in Dover Township, says there is a far greater understanding
of the nature of nicotine addictions, and the treatment for it
is much more sophisticated than it once was.
Her department runs a Tobacco Dependence Treatment Program,
a statewide program available at all seven St. Barnabas facilities
in New Jersey that aims to help people quit the habit. It's offered
through the Saint Barnabas Behavioral Health Network's Institute
for Prevention and funded by the New Jersey Department of Health & Senior
Services Division of Epidemiology. The program includes assessment,
behavioral therapy and pharmacotherapy (drugs) to help participants
reach their goal.
Quitting smoking, she says, involves biological, psychological
and social factors.
Since the program's inception in 2000, Greene says, more than
1,000 people have gone through the program to successfully quit
smoking.
Maria Fernandez, 34, of Manchester is among them. A youth counselor
who works in Brick, she had been smoking since she was 14.
"I had tried to quit many times," Fernandez says. "I tried cold
turkey, acupuncture, hypnosis, and nothing worked."
When she entered this program, she did so with fears and tears.
"I was crying, and saying, "What if I can't do it?' But I went
through the program, still go to the support group and have been
smoke-free since August."
Greene says that previous failures to quit may actually help
in a new effort to kick the habit because people have a sense
of what didn't work and why it didn't.
The keys for Fernandez to quit this time were numerous. She
had health concerns, including an uncle who had died of lung
cancer. The financial burden of smoking had taken its toll ("I've
saved $1,500 since I quit"), and her desire to be a role model
for her nieces and nephews and the students she counsels were
all factors, she says.
Her success this time was due, in large part, to the group sessions
in the six- to eight-week program, she says.
"I wasn't trying to quit alone," Fernandez says.
Before beginning the program, participants undergo an assessment.
Individual, group and family therapy is also available to encourage
and support participants to remain committed to being tobacco-free.
Participants also are given access to a variety of pharmacotherapy
aids related to nicotine replacement therapy, which may include
a skin patch or chewing gum, prescriptions for inhalers, nasal
sprays or medications.
Ex-smoker Kevin Shea, 52, of Manchester was diagnosed with Stage
2 lung cancer last November.
He hadn't been feeling well, and a routine chest X-ray to rule
out pneumonia revealed the mass in his lung.
The subsequent operation removed the upper lobe of his right
lung and 14 lymph nodes.
Currently on disability, he says he feels relatively lucky that
the cancer was discovered.
"I always take the approach that if something is wrong, fix
it," Shea says.
Shea says he smoked for 30 years before quitting seven years
ago. He says he's optimistic about the future and feeling strong.
Dr. Lourens Willekes is the thoracic surgeon at Monmouth Medical
Center in Long Branch who operated on Shea. He has seen the devastation
that lung cancer can bring to people.
"There are a number of different types of lung cancer," Willekes
says, "and sometimes patients will ask which kind has a more
favorable outcome. I always tell them that a lung cancer detected
early is more favorable than one that is not."
In perhaps 75 percent of the cases, lung cancer is not diagnosed
until its later stages, Willekes says.
This is because the symptoms don't often show up until late
in the course of the disease.
Willekes says another reason that some patients — particularly
smokers or ex-smokers — are slow to get diagnosed is because
there can be a stigma attached to lung cancer, a sense that they
participated in their own illness.
"To tell someone, "This is your own fault,' is just about the
worst thing you can to someone," Willekes says. "There are people
who never smoke who get lung cancer, and people who smoke and
never get lung cancer. Smoking is bad for you, but we can't say
definitively in any individual case that smoking was the only
reason someone got cancer. Removing that stigma might help more
people get screened."
There is still much scientists don't understand about the biology
of lung cancer, Willekes says, but treatment is getting better.
"Better chemotherapy and better surgical techniques are helping
people who have or had lung cancer live longer," Willekes says.
Shea is thankful for that.
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