In my lifetime, I’ve watched many, many people die. Some went easily into that good night and some did not. Some died deaths, which to me, were absolutely horrible and back then, we were not allowed to pull the plug. I walked with many a person covered by a sheet down that long, quiet corridor to the morgue and returned alone. I was there in my hospital whites when my own father died and I prepared his body for that long, quiet trip, but would not take it with him. Instead, I let a good friend of mine accompany him to that room at the end of the hall where the stainless steel freezers lay.
I was there when men, women and children died. I was there when they passed on struggling for life from a shattered body leaking fluids on my uniform and the floor as we worked hard to keep them in this world, and failed. I saw the faces of their loved ones crumple and turn into the pain that hurts beyond all normal sensation when they were informed of the passing. I watched old women weep quietly for the passing of a husband of nigh onto 50 years and old men sob brokenly when they realized that the lovely woman they had married 40 years ago, slept in the same bed with every night, raised children with, shared hopes, dreams and joys with through good times and bad, had left them beyond all hope of ever returning.
I watched in quiet horror as an emphysemic patient slowly strangled on yellow mucous so thick that our suction pumps could not get it out of his lungs fast enough. I had a good friend in the medical field stricken with a heart attack, who read his own EKG, looked at his own urinary output while in Intensive Care and studied his own blood pressure and lab findings and I knew that he knew he was going to die and he did. I watched a pretty young Black girl die of uremic poisoning, her kidneys shutting down, no transplant available. I was there when another pretty young Black girl slowly died on the ER table from a .22 bullet in her brain – we found the entrance wound in her mouth. Her jealous boyfriend had forced her to open her mouth, shoved the gun in there and pulled the trigger. I walked her down that long corridor and left her in that stainless steel cooler.
I was there when people died of many diseases, including cancer. Those of us in the medical field know that cancer actually has a smell about it and a look, even if it has not yet been identified. I’ve had my own hands inside a living human body as men and women so much more skilled than I worked to cut away the diseased parts. I have seen the great, bloody horror of the old style prostate removal where the surgeon nearly had to eviscerate the patient to remove the cancerous gland.
I am aware of death. I am aware of cancer, of the risks I take. I am also aware of the many other risks I take because of other dangers society has forced upon me beyond criminal activities, in the area of pollution.
I have made that long trip to the room at the end of the hall many times. I have been there when the coroner opens up the sacred seals of the body and probes within to locate the cause of death.
I have been exposed to dangerous diseases in the course of my duties, exposed to deadly chemicals, been attacked, shot at, beaten up, wrecked and fallen deathly ill, worked myself into exhaustion, and became quite aware of potential of possible death. I smoke because I am addicted and I like it and it is one of the few pleasures left to me, though I know the risks.
I have worked with and on the dying for years. I have had coworkers die from various causes. I have been there when the shattered remains of people were rushed in, clinging to a flickering life that someone tried to deliberately take from them. I have also seen people at deaths door abruptly recover and leave my care to go home to their loved ones in triumph.
Not everyone who smokes will die of a smoking related disease. Not everyone who smokes is going to shorten their lives. Not everyone who smokes is going to have cancer or chronic lung disease.
I might get lucky and not have any of that.
I spent many, many years patching people up, physically and mentally. I cannot recall how many I accompanied down to the morgue. I cannot recall how many I worked for hours to save, along with the doctors and the nurses.
Now, in a much different field, I want to enjoy my tobacco and not get sneered at probably by the children of some of the people I helped keep alive so long ago.
I have been splashed with foul biological fluids, vomited on, blood spattered, hit with fecal material, urine, and pus. I have fought to restrain people out of their minds, suffered some fractures because of it and know of the darkness that can inhabit the human psyche and how what is real can become terrifyingly unreal.
I have looked into empty eyes and wild eyes, cold eyes and terrified eyes. I have seen both good and truly bad.
Now, I want to smoke my cigarettes in the legally designated places without being harassed, made fun of, picked on, humiliated or made to feel like I’m dirt.
I think I have earned that right.
While some of you were out working in offices, going to college, plotting your retirement, making corporate decisions, balancing company books, expounding wise words of philosophy and pondering the whichness of what, I was running in IVs, scraping blood and gore off of living bodies, struggling to break through to a person in a drug induced psychosis, holding people while they threw up, wearing protective clothing in infectious diseases rooms and working with tubes which drained various bodily fluids out of people.
While you were knocking back beers and bitching about the US doing something you felt they should not be doing, I was talking people out of suicide, working with depressives, trying to stabilize schizophrenics and handling group therapy. While some of you were designing parts of a building and making $40,000 a year, I was making under $20,000 and changing bandages, monitoring stryker frames, dumping drainage flasks, scrubbing for surgery, and holding people down on the ER tables.
So, if you don’t mind, with all of that in the past, I would like to smoke my evil weed in peace. I don’t think you have the right to encroach on my civil rights.
There is a very good chance that some of you are here because I was there when your mother or father needed someone. I’ve worked on thousands of people in my time.
I think I have earned my addiction and my right to smoke within the law.
