Columnist marks one year smoke-free

August holds some special dates for me. It was the month I enlisted in the U.S. Army 35 years ago. My first and only marriage took place this month in ’83, only to last a mere seven years.

But the fifth of August holds a double anniversary for me. First, it is my late brother Matt’s birthday. (We were brothers in spirit, not in blood.) He passed away a couple of years ago from cancer.

The second one hits me a little harder in two ways. This was the day one year ago my heart tried to kill me, and it was the last time I smoked a cigarette.

Now if you think you’re going to get a lecture from me about the evils of smoking, forget it. There will be a little PSA for you later. I will be direct and honest.

We all make choices in our lives as adults. I chose to smoke cigarettes at the age of 23. It was a bad choice, considering what it did to me later in my life. Do I regret that? Does the term “hell, yeah!” ring a bell?

I can’t go back in time to change that. So I must live the best I can without those things darkening my life and my lungs. That hasn’t been a problem at all.

Ever since getting out of the hospital one year ago this month, I have had no desire to light up a cigarette whatsoever. That’s something I’ll never regret. I’m much better off without those coffin nails fouling the air.

Yet, what a price I paid in quitting. Let’s sum it up: A heart attack, quintuple bypass surgery to repair the damage to my heart, and a nearly month long stay in the hospital to recover from the trauma done to me in the name of medicine.

I had little choice in quitting smoking, as you can tell. To quit in extremis like this is clearly not recommended by anyone, especially me. There are better ways, believe me.

A friend and fellow Frontiersman columnist Charles Hayes once asked me after all this went down: “Did you feel your own mortality?” A huge “YES!” was my reply. It was the closest death has ever come to me since my time in the war.

While I know death comes to us all eventually, I really want to put that off for years upon years. Because, let’s face it, regardless of your faith or belief system, death sucks.

What about the afterlife? Well it is like this: in order to find out truly if it exists, you have to die first. So I’m more than willing to wait decades to find the answer to that question. I love living on this good Earth too much to give in to the final act of life just yet.

I abhor smoking now, and I have gone public on that and on e-cigs, too. I urge all who can to quit. I’m not heartless, as some have accused me in comments to a column I wrote for the Feb. 19 Frontiersman called “Smoking or vaping, bad news both ways.”

I do know it will not be easy to quit, by any stretch of the imagination. It is harder to quit smoking, it is said, than it is to kick heroin.

Nevertheless, one must keep trying and never give in or give up. Hey, use my life as an example to inspire those efforts to get smoke-free. (PSA message complete, resume regular programming.)

This anniversary marks a year of recovery and a life changed forever. A life completely smoke-free for a year and still going strong, although I now live with type 2 diabetes, another issue brought about by my heart attack.

That blood glucose meter rules my life three times a day. Meds and insulin and all the trappings rule next to it. Frankly, I hate needles. But now I have to deal with them daily.

So I watch what I eat now, so I don’t light up that meter. It has been very good at curbing most of my problem diet issues. Once in a while I rebel and go nuts on a pizza, a Mat-Su Miner dog or a bratwurst. That’s just proof I’m far from perfect and a work in progress.

I also walk a lot now and ride my bike at least once a week. (I’m up to 6 miles on the bike.)

Most important, I try to live life to the fullest – at least within the limits set by my still-healing heart. With my restored sense of smell and taste, after years of polluting both with cigarette smoke, everything has a new fresh flavor to savor, and that is very cool indeed.

This is just the first milestone in my smoke-free life that I wanted to share with you, the reader. My hope is that I tack on many more years smoke-free for decades to come.

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.