Are you still accepting submissions for your story? While I have only been vaping for a few weeks, I think my story has an interesting element to it. PM if interested, otherwise I hope it is at least a good read for the forum members!
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In mid July 2009, I began to suffer from symptoms of a herniated disc in my back, something I had been through twice before resulting in two discectomy surgeries. After an MRI to confirm what I already suspected, I knew I would be facing a third surgery on the same disc, but this time it would be a spinal
fusion. From speaking with my doctor and online research, it was clear that as a smoker, I needed to quit smoking or risk a higher chance of a failed fusion and thus the possibility of another surgery down the road to try again. As any smoker would tell you (and I was a pack-and-a-half a day smoker for over 21 years), it is difficult to quit smoking. Especially "cold turkey", and also especially when you don't quite feel
ready, but rather
forced to quit. Nicotine patches and gum were not an option because the problem with fusions and smokers is not the smoking but rather the nicotine. I decided to purchase an electronic cigarette and after using 18 mg then 11 mg e-liquid for a week, I switched to nicotine-free liquid. While it is still difficult to fight the withdrawal symptoms of stopping my nicotine intake, I truly believe that the e-cigarette as helped tremendously as it replicates many other aspects of smoking. Another option with e-cigarettes as opposed to patches or gum is that you have much more control over your nicotine intake. I can take 11 mg juice and cut it down to 1 mg if I wanted to which just might be enough to keep me "happy". I plan to discuss this option with my doctor to see what he thinks, and how it might affect my fusion. Even if it isn't an option, I still feel that the e-cigarette along with the variety of tasty nicotine-free juices will help to keep me off the nicotine and help my fusion to be a successful one. I was off of the nicotine before the surgery and while it is much too early to tell how successful it will be while using the e-cigarette, I am certain that it will go better than it would had I continued to smoke cigarettes. I feel this may be yet another advance in the successfulness of spinal fusions in "smokers". As a side note and on the plus side, my wife has now quit smoking too, thanks to the e-cigarette. She has tried countless times before with patches and gum and it never worked. While she is still using 11 mg nicotine e-juice and I am currently using nicotine-free e-juice, the bottom line is that we are no longer taking in those thousands of chemicals found in traditional cigarettes, and we plan to keep it that way.
Kevin Dommer
Lansing, IL
