Thank you for sharing your good news.

Congratulations, Nik! See? Your time won't be up until a mountain of a rose falls on you nearing your hundredth birthday, while you're digging it up to transplant it!

That's mostly good news Nik. I think I have read somewhere that lungs will improve after stopping smoking,ie. not just not get worse.

Glad to hear the good news, and still hoping for a great outcome from the the CAT scan. We're thinking about you, Nik.

John

Great news so far. Keeping my fingers crossed for you.

Glad to hear there's plenty of good news mixed in with the cautionary lung report. All the more reason to get outside with the roses and enjoy the fresh air - good for your lungs and the soul. Thanks for sharing the positive report! We're all thinking of you.

Cynthia

I hear ya on the nasty hospital food. My dh brings egg and sausage burritos home from the hospital he works at in the mornings, sometimes. I don't like them so I don't eat them and even our cat won't eat them although she normally likes sausage. So that should tell ya something lol.

Congratulations, Nik! I'm sorry the results weren't 100% great, but you can & will improve your health & it sounds very encouraging that your doctors are satisfied with your coronary health.

Glad for you that the worst is behind you now. Thank you for the update & here's to wishing you many long years of digging through the rocks to plant & enjoy your roses :-D

Nik, I'm glad you made it through the long medical day with promising results and a much smaller bill than would be the case in the US! I've been sending well wishes across the miles. For the record, my father quit smoking in middle age, underwent bypass surgery, allowed his lungs to clean up and heal and enjoyed life for 40 more years. Carol

All sounds really encouraging and especially so that you aren't smoking. It sounds like your body will have a great new chance for recovery. I think Leonard Cohen (who is a lot older than you) has also postponed his exit. Great news.

Good news, and now that you have quit smoking, the lungs should improve.

I think that anytime you leave doctors/ facilities etc., with good reason to be incredibly optimistic, especially after an ordeal like the one you described, is Great News!!!

Rock on Nik! Glad to hear you quit smoking. Now go order more roses :)

Being home from the hospital is always good! Enjoy the garden and feel the stress start to be pruned away. :)

Nik, very happy to hear you had relatively good news. It's true about the lungs improving when you stop smoking. It is gradual but very real.

I'm also glad to hear the good news. Heed the doctor's advice for healthy lifestyle changes and with you already quitting smoking you'll have steady improvement and long life.

Really glad to hear that the news was not so bad, Nik (and, as Melissa said, that you had access to such comprehensive care). It's good to know where you stand and to have a strategy. As Rosefolly says, the lungs do begin improving, and the chances of smoking-related disease begin to decline, as soon as you stop smoking. (I smoked for 20 years and began breathing better surprisingly soon after quitting.)

Thanks for letting us know how matters stand. I thought of you all day yesterday. I have lung problems myself, COPD after years of smoking but gave it up 15 years ago and medication lets me lead a normal life for my age, I'm 72.

I know all about hard and narrow hospital beds. I fell out of bed in my sleep when I was in hospital with pneumonia a year ago and had to stay two more days after the pneumonia was cured. I was bruised all over and had to have more x-rays to check no bones were broken.

I have to say the hospital beds in the U.S. are superior to the ones you two describe; they're not narrow and not at all hard. Of course you have to pay a lot more to enjoy them.

Nik, the fact that your heart is good is the best news, and the lungs do clear continually after you quit smoking. A year from now most of that black gunk will be gone and your newly pink lungs will feel and look a lot better. At least now your ordeal is over and you can get back to real life - the people you love and the things that give you joy.

Nik, congratulations, so glad that things are looking up for you! And particularly, congrats on quitting smoking, that's a really hard thing to do. In order to reward yourself (and to help prevent the risk of relapse) I suggest that you allocate at least a percentage, but preferably ALL, of the money you used to spend on smokes to buying roses!!!! (or other plants of your choice). I quit 26 years ago, and I still use this as an excuse for plant-buying, lol! (Hmm, there's this peony I want on sale at one of the garden centers. $15. Let's see, I used to smoke a pack a day - that's just TWO DAYS worth of cigarettes! How can I say no??!!) Anyway, all my best wishes to you and your family, Nik!

Glad to hear things are looking up

Happy for you Nik! Good luck with lungs testing. 35 years of smoking? I have to say it, you burnt a lot of cash! Lol

I'm glad they said no stent. Sometimes they aren't the best long term. It's so much better if you can let your body improve with diet and working in the garden. Think of all the good things you have to look forward to. I'm glad you can get this care and not go into debt. Why can't we understand the importance of this in the U.S.?

One of my favorite books on healthy living is Mastering Leptin. I liked it because it explains how to help yourself feel your best and reach a healthy weight in a way that made perfect sense to me. Most problems caused by inflammation can be helped with understanding and good eating. I'm glad they feel you're able to help yourself heal and don't need surgery. Keep up the progress. I'm so happy for you.

Can't believe that I didn't see this sooner. I'm so glad for you that you didn't need the stent and the diagnosis is so much better than it could have been! Here's hoping for more good news at your next lung consult.

nikthegreek, sorry to hear that age is catching up to you also. A group of us retirees get together daily for coffee and to discuss the day's news and our health problems. We try to look at our health problems with a sense of humor. One of the best comments (in my mind) is the following:

One of the guys states that he had decided to rejoin the work force so he applied at one of the major local companies. The company stated that part of the application process was to take an aptitude test to see what he was best suited for. Well, at his age he thought that that was a waste of time; but a rule is a rule, so he took the test.

The results came back:

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ORGAN DONOR - the parts were more valuable than the whole :<)

Henry, That is horrible but funny. Nik is a Spring chicken relatively.

Personally I decided to live to 103 back when I was in elementary school. I read an article in the Sunday supplement to the paper that said that most people lived about as long as they expected to live. No idea if it was true or not, but I decided then and there to decide to live a long time!

There is a book called the blue zones that tries to find what people have in common that allows them to live past 100. A sense of being useful and community as we age is one of the keys.

Keep the happy thoughts coming. Negative thoughts generate stress chemicals in the body which cause wear and tear. Anyway, you see more solutions with a positive outlook. If you feel negative thoughts are troubling you more than they should, try a diet overhaul. My negative thinking is often linked to blood sugar swings from eating too many carbs or snacking. It's amazing how food can influence how we feel in a very substantial way. Then there are all the other things we take in. What's great is that we can all have the ability to make improvements. Every good decision is a step toward feeling better tomorrow.

I'm like you, Rosefolly!

ΟΚ. A guy desperately wants to live to be at least 100 years old. So he goes to his doctor and asks him about the dos and don'ts that would let him live to a great old age. Predictably the doctor starts to prescribe a looooooong list of mainly don'ts but a lot of hard to suffer dos as well... The list goes on and on and the guy is taking notes. After a few pages of notes the guy is looking pale and sweaty, anxious with the burden of what he's going to miss and the suffering ahead.. So when the doctor seems to have finished the guy asks: 'Well OK, but if I do all of those things and miss all this long list of life's pleasures, are you sure I'm going to make it to 100?' 'No idea' says the doctor. 'But however long you live, it sure's going to feel like 100 years...'

nikthegreek, thank you for the "humor story" to add to our coffee group discussion.