Awesome conversation with my doctor

[afrazier5]

I wanted to share with everyone my experience during my yearly physical today. I hadn't seen my doc since probably my last physical this time last year. At that time, I was smoking about 1-1.5 packs of Marlboro red daily and had been for 24 years. Anyway, he was the one to get me to try Chantix after I had failed already with gums and patches and knew of my constant failure with Chantix over the prior few years.

Anyway flash forward to today. I told him I quit smoking on January 15th with electronic cigarettes after so many failures. I hadn't intended to quit using it knowing I had failed so much prior but it worked for me. He asked heaps of questions about the equipment, liquid, where I get my supplies, etc. I explained that while what I use is slightly complicated due to DIY, there is an easy way and that is not by purchasing gas station electronics.

He said he had lots of patients that either will not try Chantix due to the side effects or are super sensitive to them and can't take them but want to quit and are unable to do so using pharma. I pulled out my stack of cards from ElectronicStix (my local vendor) and handed them to him. He is going to keep them around for other patients that cannot quit using pharma as an alternative!!!!

I also asked him when drawing my blood to test for nicotine levels out of curiosity. I purposely hit my PV pretty hard leading up to the appointment just to see how it would show up.

So folks, there ARE doctors out there starting to wake up and smell the vapor. THEY know that meds have a poor success rate and are looking for successful alternatives. Please make sure next time you go into your doc for a check up that you take a stack of cards. Doesn't matter whose cards, just take them and let your doc know the vendor is trusted and offer YOUR help to his patients to make the switch.

 

[dotma]

WHat an awesome story!! Good job! I would be really curious to know as well what the nic level shows.

 

[afrazier5]

Yup as soon as I have the blood results back, I'll share with the group

 

[mianker]

That is a great story, thanks for sharing. It will be interesting to hear your nic level.

 

[Baldr]

Great story.

I read a lot of posts with people saying "What can we do to educate the masses" and such. Educating your own doctor seems, to me, to be the best plan. A doctor who has seen a patient go from smoker to vaper and can tell that he's much healthier is likely to tell other smokers about it. When he's seen it 5 times, 10 times, or 100 times, he'll be on our side.

 

[glowgirl]

That is wonderful news! I have a doctors appointment coming up so I will stick my biz cards in my purse now.

 

[Dawn]

Wow an open minded doctor! What a novelty. You better hang on to that guy/woman, lol. I thought about bringing this up to my doctor at my next appointment, but don't want to hear him Blah, Blah, Blah about my smoking or now it would be Blah, Blah, Blah bad mouthing vaping. I don't have much confidence that he is going to approve. In my experience they only approve of the expensive and crappy prescriptions that they are pushing for drug companies.... whether they work or not..... and no matter the HORRIBLE side affects.

Will be looking forward to what you hear on the nicotine levels, that has me quite curious.

 

[afrazier5]

Here are the results along with the PV and liqud I use. I used my PV more than normal leading up to the 0900 blood draw and had been fasting for 12 hours.

-----------
-5v Tekk mod
-Approx 4-5mg banana peach DIY liquid (70%PG)

Nicotine and Cotinine, Serum
Nicotine 22 ng/ml
Reporting Limit: 5ng/ml
Observed concentrations in habitual smokers: 3 to 63 ng Nicotine/ml

Cotinine 245 ng/ml
Reporting limit: 20 ng/ml
Synonym(s): Nicotine Metabolite
Observed concentrations in habitual smokers: 20-700 ng cotinine/ml

This result was generated using Lc-MS/MS; an equivalent mthod to GC/MS.
-------

Now I don't know much about what any of this means so will leave it up to someone who knows more how to translate this stuff into lay terms.

 

[BoiseMike]

I think it means that for life insurance you would be considered a smoker. The numbers are right up there in the levels observed in habitual smokers.

 

[alanselo]

That is one great story you have shared with us. Thank you so much! I just wish I had known about e-cigs a couple of years ago. My doctor who has treated me for the last 20 years or so was in California on a visit and had a heart attack. He smoked too. We had many discussions regarding the difficulty of quitting and how the alternatives weren't quite doing it for a lot of flolks.

As a result of his heart attack and the complications he had to quit his practice. I would have loved to have shared my experiences with e-cigs if only I had known about it.

Thanks again for taking the time to share this with us and I hope it serves as a reminder to all of us that sharing our stories, no matter if we believe they might help or not. They do!

 

[Lethalp]

What did the doc say about your blood test? I would also loved to have known what else would have showed up in blood when u were smoking! But I certainly don't want u to go back to smoking just for a blood test! Lol I am surprised they didn't pick up the banana and peach

 

[afrazier5]

He didn't say anything about it - just mailed the results. I thought the banana peach might show up too considering that has been my all day vape for the last 4-5 months and I mix it pretty strong.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Glad to hear.

 

[nightsong]

Interesting, thanks for sharing your results. Congrats on having a open-minded knowledgeable doctor. I see you vape a pretty low mg, just curious how many ml do you vape/day?

 

[afrazier5]

Nightsong I vape (not smoke) around 4-5 ml per day on days where I don't work. When I'm working it would be around 3-4 I think. I mix my own liquid and go through about 30 ml every 8 or 9 days I think.

 

[nightsong]

Sorry, I need a way to block myself from posting after 2 am, edited my post Thanks for the info, I'm a little surprised your numbers were as high as they were given your low nic usage. I guess I will have to go to 0 Nic before I can think of having low enough numbers for non-smoker insurance rates. Oh well, at least I know it's better than smoking...

 

[Baldr]

I think insurance will vary by company. Some count vaping the same as smoking, some count vaping as non smoking.

 

[trosper13]

I would have also been interested if you backed off vaping a little before the test to see the nic results. I never could bring myself to try the Chantix after seeing a close friend go pretty wacko when she was on it. One of my other concerns is that the huge-mega-pharma companies see how vaping is so much better than all their own products and they will either get their greedy hands into it or screw up legislation that either makes it illegal or crazily taxed like analogs are now.

 

[pnc81498]

Posting so I can read when not on phone. Looks like a good read.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

 

[hiram13pm]

I would have also been interested if you backed off vaping a little before the test to see the nic results. I never could bring myself to try the Chantix after seeing a close friend go pretty wacko when she was on it. One of my other concerns is that the huge-mega-pharma companies see how vaping is so much better than all their own products and they will either get their greedy hands into it or screw up legislation that either makes it illegal or crazily taxed like analogs are now.

Don't worry... the taxman cometh. As P. J. O'Rourke has said, "money is to politicians what the Eucalyptus tree is to koala bears: food, water, shelter, and something to crap on." When vaping becomes popular enough to cut into their sin-tax profi.... er, I mean 'revenues'... the taxman won't be far behind. You can count on it.

Great story, though.