"56 year old male, chest pain, DIB"
Despite a large number of pedestrians trying their very best to throw themselves in front of my ambulance and numerous cyclists doing their uppermost to raise my blood pressure we made it to the address without any deaths on our conscious! Loaded up like a travelling circus, we headed round to the entrance to the flats and staggered up the stairs and knocked. The smell of stale smoke hit me even before the door was opened. Eventually, we were let in by our very breathless patient. He slowly walked back into the flat, pulling his oxygen tubing with him.
Home oxygen is given to people with severe respiratory problems and our guy was a long term COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) sufferer. Sitting in his chair he panted for about 30 seconds until he was able to speak. The upshot of the story was his lungs were pooped. He was having a particularly bad day of 'pooped lungs' and it was causing him real discomfort. Whilst my crew mate was doing his ECG etc my Detective Columbo eyes were wondering around the room. On the table next to the patient was a blue inhaler, a purple inhaler, a brown inhaler, various tablets, a bowl with spit in it, a tin of Fisherman's Friends, a lighter, an ashtray and a pack of 20 Superking.
"You're still smoking?!"
"Yeah, I know I shouldn't."
"How many a day?"
"Maybe 30 or 40"
"No wonder you're breathless!"
"I know I know, save the lecture, I've heard it before!" he said with a grin!
"You know I have to say something! We call it health promotion, you call it nagging!"
We had a good chuckle about flogging dead horses! He was a really nice guy with plenty of tales to tell which made the journey to hospital a lot more enjoyable than usual. Then he said something that firstly took me back a bit and then got me thinking.
"So, you wag your finger at me for smoking, do you wag your finger at fat people for over eating?"
It took me a good while of thinking to reply:
"No!"
"Well don't you think it's unfair to pick on us smokers! Besides, you're one to talk. If I'm not mistaken that's a pack of cigarettes in your top pocket!"
BUSTED! He had me hook, line and sinker! Nothing I could say now would have any credibility when it came to smoking! I felt like saying "Do as I say, not as I do" but I was laughing to much! I could hear my crew mate in the front laughing away too!
"You just got schooled!" he shouted through.
It's true! I had indeed got schooled! We dropped him off at hospital to get the treatment he desperately needed and left. I could hear him chuckling as we walked away! He was awfully proud of himself!
He had a bloody good point though. Why don't we berate obese people? Why is it acceptable to say 'filthy habit', 'can't stand the smell of smoke', 'do you have to do that near me?', 'it will kill you' and make the smokers smoke outside to be made a spectacle of?
Why is NOT acceptable to say to someone who is obese who is stuffing a burger into their face 'that's a filthy habbit' or 'I can't stand the sight of you shovelling food into your gob' or 'do you have to do that near me' or 'eating that stuff will make you fatter' or 'being so fat will kill you?' Why can't we tell them that their fatness is disgusting? Why can't we make them eat fast food standing outside under a gazebo and make a spectacle of them?
Because, as a country we are not quite there yet and too many of us love a Big Mac! Before you all tell me I am being harsh and horrible, I don't actually think all that stuff, nor would I want to say it but it is an interesting talking point. Smoking kills. That's a fact. As a result smoking has been made less and less appealing. Tobacco companies can't sponsor anything, their packets are covered in 'SMOKING KILLS' slogans and images of tumours. It costs more and more to buy them, you can't smoke anywhere in public and rightly so. Smoking costs the NHS in excess of £5 billion a year and that's not including the cost of lost productivity. It also causes 1 in 5 of all deaths. Why wouldn't we try and stop people smoking and make it as unappealing as possible?!
How about if I told you that but next year, obesity will be costing the NHS £6.3 billion a year. At the moment 1 in 10 deaths are caused by obesity but within 10 years that number is expected to treble. If that is the case obesity will be costing more and causing more deaths than smoking. Will it then be acceptable to malign the obese like we malign smokers?! Will Big Macs have photos of fat people on them with slogans like 'BIG MAC KILLS' plastered across them?! Will there be a huge tax added to all foods that make people fat?! Will companies like McDonald's be banned from advertising?! Will all fast food have to be served in plain packaging?!
What do you think?! Should smokers be vilified? Should fat people be vilified? Do we allow free choice in this country only when it suits current political motives? When do we do with obesity what we have done with smoking? Do we wait 15 years until 70% of the UK population is obese or overweight? I don't know what to do. I would certainly feel uncomfortable sitting in the back of an ambulance telling someone they are too fat. I feel bad enough telling smokers not to smoke! Being a fat smoker myself doesn't put me in a good position to lecture either!!
Alternatively, you could scrap everything I've just said, promote smoking and encourage over eating because some studies say making the population healthy would cost the country more in the long term from a longer life expectancy and care costs! Basically, we are screwed whatever we do so I'm just going to eat, smoke, drink and be merry! You?!