Smoking and Heart Disease: Mariano's Story

Mariano Z. took part in CDC's Tips From Former Smokers campaign, which shares the stories of real people living with smoking-related illness. His words are paraphrased here.

Mariano is Hispanic and lives in Illinois. He describes his life since 2004 as a second chance.

How it started

He began smoking at 15, when a girl asked him for a cigarette and he wanted to impress her. His family did not find out until he was 18. In time he was smoking two packs a day. Year after year, he says, he did not see what cigarettes were doing to his health.

The morning it caught up with him

At 47, in 2004, he woke up one morning dizzy and sick, sweating heavily. His doctor told him his blood pressure was extremely high and his arteries were in serious trouble — he was on the verge of a heart attack. He was admitted to hospital that day, and three days later he had open heart surgery to replace blocked blood vessels in his heart. He smoked his last cigarette on the day he learned he needed the operation, and he has not smoked since.

He calls the surgery brutal, and the recovery was painful. What stays with him is that he might have avoided all of it by quitting years earlier — and that he was lucky not to have had a heart attack that day, and not to have died.

Recovery

His doctor told him that the sooner he walked, the better. So he walked the hospital floor, then around the house once he was home, then around the block. A month later he was walking 10 blocks. As a smoker he could not manage 4 blocks; now he can walk 5 miles without trouble. He has more energy, and, as someone who loves to cook, he noticed that food tastes better.

A different life

After the surgery and quitting, Mariano chose to live differently. He spends more time with family and friends, including his young child. He went back to work, but now takes jobs only in smoke-free places, having seen what smoking and secondhand smoke do. He is still paying the price: he has to watch his health constantly and will need medication for the rest of his life.

When he sees someone smoking, he shows them the long scar down his chest and asks whether they want one like it, warning that sooner or later something like it is likely to come. His wake-up call came, he says, he feels good now, and he means to keep it that way.

Help to quit

Free help is available:

• By phone: 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669); in Spanish, 1-855-DÉJELO-YA (1-855-335-3569); in Chinese, 1-800-838-8917; in Korean, 1-800-556-5564; in Vietnamese, 1-800-778-8440.
• By text or app: text QUITNOW to 333888 (message and data rates may apply), or use CDC's quitSTART app.
• Online: CDC's quit-smoking pages, smokefree.gov and the Asian Smokers' Quitline.

CDC also has a fact page on heart disease and stroke, and other Tips stories about them.

Sources

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tips From Former Smokers, "Mariano Z.'s Story": https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/stories/mariano.html
• The campaign video says Mariano smoked "for 30 years," which does not match starting at 15 and quitting at 47; the length of time is left out here.
• The campaign's photographs, print ad and quit-resource graphic are not reproduced.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.