Click on picture to enlarge

by Jill Funke

When Pete Ter Wee began smoking over forty years ago, the dangers from the habit were not yet known by the public. Even before he was diagnosed with emphysema 15 years ago, Pete knew that the shortness of breath and coughing he was experiencing were not good signs and he kept telling himself he would quit smoking. He found out that the reason he couldn’t take a deep breath and found himself coughing constantly was that his lungs were filling with fluid. When his doctor told him that he must quit in order to stop the emphysema from progressing, Pete would give up cigarettes for a while, and then under stressful situations would find himself smoking again. Working nights and farming during the day, he says that he lived on coffee and cigarettes during that period in his life. Receiving more information on cigarettes, Pete found that the addictive property nicotine, when inhaled in cigarette smoke, reaches the brain faster than drugs injected into the body intravenously. Besides the physical addition, smokers also link smoking with daily and social activities, thus making the habit very difficult to overcome.

Pete’s physician told him that although the main reason he developed emphysema was his use of tobacco, his farming also contributed to it through the use of chemicals and exposure to silage. Pete was surprised to learn that farmers who smoke are more likely to develop the disease than smokers who live in the city. As the emphysema got worse, Pete’s treatment included inhalers, nebulizers and steroids. Pete continued to work and farm until his lung function went to 20%. At that point, his son, Dan, did most of the farming so that Pete could work at his job and spend the rest of the time recuperating. Eventually, Pete could no longer work. He and his wife, Mickey, moved into Larchwood. He heard about someone who also had emphysema and received an operation that greatly improved his health and breathing. Pete decided to get more information about the surgery.

By January of this year, Pete’s lungs were so full of fluid that they were squeezing his heart and stomach. For years, he hadn’t been able to eat a full meal, and was down to about two tablespoons of food at a time. Pete went in for surgery and doctors removed 60% of his lung. This made room for his other organs to function properly, as well as allowed him to breathe much more deeply. After the operation, Pete learned that the medical staff had found cancer on his lung, and removed more of the tissue than originally planned in hopes of eliminating the disease as well as the damaged portion of the lung. He was told that eighty-seven percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, making it the number one cause of lung cancer. The reason that cigarettes are linked to cancer is because cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 different chemicals, many of which are proven cancer-causing substances, or carcinogens. Many of these chemicals also affect nonsmokers who inhale the cigarette smoke "secondhand". Secondhand smoke is responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths each year.

Today, Pete finds that unless the humidity is high, he can breathe much more easily. He was able to go off of steroids, and is much less dependent on his oxygen tank. He continues to do the exercising he did to prepare his body for surgery, and makes sure that he spends time with Dan, his daughters Joni, Kristie, and Sara, as well as his eight grandchildren.

While undergoing surgery, Pete kept pictures of his precious grandchildren by his bed at the hospital, as they were his primary reason for having the surgery. Although the surgery helped him tremendously, Pete knows that he still has some emphysema in his lungs and it will again progress. At the same time, he must routinely see his physician for follow up tests as 95% of people with lung cancer will get it again.

Although Pete usually avoids the spotlight, he hopes that by sharing his story, he can help convince a smoker to quit or prevent someone from even starting to smoke. Through his ordeal, he became aware that tobacco causes an estimated 8.8% of deaths globally, which breaks down to 5 million people each year, 13,500 every day and 1 person each 6.5 seconds. Alarmingly, this death toll is expected to double by the year 2030. Considering the fact that each day, between 82,000 and 99,000 young people worldwide start to smoke each day, Pete hopes that they fully understand how miserable it has been living with emphysema and how scary it is to think about developing lung cancer. Although lungs can be transplanted, the success rate of the operation is far less than other organ transplants. In addition, Pete wants people to know that the expected survival rate for people with lung cancer is a meager 15%, compared to a 63% survival rate for colon cancer, an 88% survival rate for breast cancer and a 99% survival rate for prostate cancer.

Pete wants to encourage current smokers to quit because when they do, the risk of lung cancer decreases each year as normal cells begin to replace abnormal cells. After ten years of not smoking, the risk drops to a level that is between one-third to one-half the risk for those who continue to smoke. In addition to lowering the risk for lung cancer, smokers who quit also greatly reduce their risk of developing other smoking-related diseases, such as emphysema, heart disease, stroke and chronic bronchitis.