Fremonter reaps benefits of not smoking

It was a long 35 years of putting cigarettes to her lips, but Darlene Sheets is happy for the 16 months she has now been smoke free.

“I smoked since I was 15 or 16,” she said. “It was cool back then.”

It might have been cool when she was a teenager, but being cool eventually turned into a two-pack-a-day addiction.

“They were my security blanket,” Sheets said. “When I was upset, I smoked a cigarette. When I was happy, I smoked a cigarette. Most people did not think I’d ever quit smoking.”

She said the best way to describe the addiction to smoking to a non-smoker is that cigarettes are your friends �” they’re there any time you need them.

“I was buying roughly two packs a day,” Sheets said. “I didn’t buy them by the carton because then I’d be smoking too much.”

Today is the 33rd annual Great American Smokeout, a day the American Cancer Society urges people to not light up and try to kick the habit. To help, counselors are available free of charge on the organization’s quit line at 1-800-227-2345 and help is available at www.cancer.org.

Working at A.J. Merrick Manor, Sheets said she probably should have known better. However, when Fremont Area Medical Center decided to become a smoke-free campus last year, she knew she’d have to do something.

“When the hospital said it was going smoke free, I thought I’d be fired,” Sheets said. “I thought what if there was a blizzard and I couldn’t get my car out of the parking lot to go smoke?”

Instead, she went to her family doctor who prescribed a smoking cessation medication called Chantix that affects the brain’s pleasure receptors and stops nicotine cravings.

But that wasn’t the end of her days as a smoker. It wasn’t that easy.

“In January (2007) I went to the doctor and got a prescription that laid on my dresser for about two months,” she said. “Then I got it filled and it sat there another few months.”

The hospital went smoke-free July 1, 2007, so she knew she had to do something soon and started taking the medication.

She said she didn’t quit smoking right away, but that the drug helped her and eventually she was able to quit and stay smoke free.

“It was just a God send,” Sheets said. “I’ve been smoke free ever since. But I know I can never pick one up again.”

She saved a lot of money quitting smoking, but said at first she complained at paying the more than $90 for the prescription every month. Then she did the math and quit complaining.

There were surprising effects from quitting smoking.

“I had very thin hair and after quitting for about eight months it started growing back thicker,” she said. “It was the strangest thing. If you’re bald, don’t go kidding yourself that your hair’s going to grow back by quitting smoking.”

Another benefit was no more smoke smell.

“I never realized I smelled that bad,” Sheets said. “Oh my God, I stunk.”

She said she does miss some of the social aspects of smoking, but isn’t letting that bother her.

“I’d just do something else more beneficial. Now I’m into diet and exercise,” Sheets said. “Cigarettes kept me thin, I didn’t have to worry about it.”

She also has other things she no longer has to worry about after quitting smoking.

“I don’t hack all the time and I don’t cough all the time,” Sheets said. “I don’t snore anymore.”

Things she couldn’t do as a smoker she can do again.

“I can walk and I can exercise,” Sheets said. “I could not exercise before. I have more stamina, more go power.”