Leonard Nimoy and COPD

I just saw a commercial about COPD, the disease that killed Leonard Nimoy. His wife was interviewed about the disease and how she suspected that his smoking habit was the cause. Everything was cool until at the end they showed an emaciated Leonard in a wheelchair. It was enough to make me quit smoking.

 

I'm glad you quit.

 

Thanks, bro. Now I only smoke when my neighbor’s dog takes a dump on my lawn.

 

The things that turn some people on, phew!
JB

 

Have a smoke when my neighbor's dog takes a dump on my lawn.

You'll be dead from CCOP by noon Sunday.

 

I'm glad she agreed to do it. I think Nimoy might have even agreed to it before his death, but I'm not sure about that.

That's one of the tamer anti-smoking PSAs. Some of them are very disturbing, but that's the point and I hope it encourages many people to quit.

 

Yes. I’ve seen some anti-smoking commercials that are very graphic.

 

I can certainly relate; I've been smoking cigarettes for 30 years (along with enough weed to overflow the back of any pickup truck). I've been using nicotine patches to struggle off and on with my Marlboros for the past few years. Sometimes I'm able to do days without smoking and even when I do smoke, it's only several cigarettes a day. I guess you could say this mid-40s dude is in the Twilight Zone between smoking and non-smoking.

 

^
I guess Nimoy tried to quit, but the nicotine craving was just too hard for him to kick. There is a segment on the 1st season TOS blooper reel where Nimoy pops a sucker instead of a cigarette into his mouth after blowing a shot.

 

That's incorrect. Nimoy did quit, yet COPD still exacted its toll 30 years later. See 'Illness and Death' here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Nimoy

 

Yeah, though he quit decades ago (I think around the time of Trek IV), the long term damage was already initiated. Had he not smoked at all, odds are he still might be with us today.

It's certainly one habit of which I was "cured" years before I was potentially interested. As a kid around 5, maybe 6 years old, I simply watched as one of my maternal uncles "lit up". Noticing my rapt attention,, he thought it would be amusing to observe my reaction from taking a puff. He asked for me to approach and then placed the cigarette in my mouth. Silly me, I did as he asked. I thought I should "blow", which sent the cancer stick sailing. My uncle chuckled and said I needed to breathe "inward". I did and my asthma symptoms kicked me in the throat and lungs! Merciful Mogg did I ever suffer a coughing and wheezing fit! I suspect I was on the verge of puking. My uncle thought the escapade hilarious and heartily laughed at my expense! Smarmy b*st*rd! But the misery of that experience imprinted itself so deeply that I never, EVER had the urge to smoke! So, in retrospect, I should thank him.

 

What a strange uncle!!! Good that you, like me, never smoked but weird that he would do that to you at that age! I doubt any of my uncles would have even thought of doing that let alone have done it!
JB

 

I listened to a commercial with Shatner today (he was hawking a cleaner) where he said he's had COPD for a decade.

First I'd heard he had it.

 

He must be one tough son-of-gun.

 

Does he? I never knew whether or not Shatner was a smoker himself.

 

That's very lucky for you that you never smoked, if your asthma reaction to cigarette smoke is that extreme. My own lifelong asthma was never emergent, it was always a low-grade annoyance, nothing more. So luckily for me my 30 years of smoking hasn't changed my asthma very noticeably. But I do "loosen up" my breathing now and then with a puff of my albuterol inhaler. Still, I've had my share of prolonged, noisy coughing fits after smoking cigarettes and weed at the same time.

 

COPD is primarily caused by smoking, but it's not the only cause.

 

Sometimes the best way to learn about fire is get burned. It's not nice, but it's often true.

 

Shatner with cig photo.

 

Isn't COPD the modern, PC term for emphysema? I don't see any significant difference between the two diseases.