Dana’s Story: Watching Smoking Take Her Mother — and Finally Quitting

Dana grew up in a small North Carolina town where nearly all her family and friends smoked. She began smoking occasionally as a young teenager, and by 16 she was smoking every day — sharing cigarettes with her mother, Terrie, who later became one of the best-known faces of CDC’s Tips From Former Smokers campaign. To Dana, smoking seemed normal; no one around her talked about what it might do to their health.

Tips From Former Smokers: Dana S.'s Impact on Family story. CDC.

Her mother’s illness

In 2001, Terrie was diagnosed with oral and throat cancers caused by years of smoking. Surgeons removed her larynx (voice box). Dana, then 20, has described being overwhelmed when she first saw her mother after the operation — only then grasping how serious it was, as she saw the incision stretching from ear to ear.

Terrie had to relearn how to communicate: writing on a dry-erase board, using sign language, learning esophageal speech, and finally speaking through an artificial voice device. Dana supported her through it — while still fighting her own nicotine addiction.

The cancer returned several times and spread to Terrie’s brain. Surgeries scarred her face and neck, and chemotherapy left her weak. In 2009, Dana moved back closer to home to help care for her. In a Tips video, Dana explained how hard it is on a family: you live through much of what your loved one goes through, even if not in the same way.

Quitting

Even as Terrie shared smoking’s toll on her health with the nation through the Tips campaign, Dana kept smoking. The morning after her mother died in September 2013, Dana walked out of the hospital and lit a cigarette.

Then she decided to take control. With the help of prescription quit-smoking medication, she quit for good. Her mother had always told her never to give up trying to quit. Dana has said she wishes she could tell her mother she is smoke-free — and that what she can do now is carry her mother’s message to help others quit.

Free help to quit

• 1-800-QUIT-NOW (1-800-784-8669); in Spanish, 1-855-DÉJELO-YA (1-855-335-3569); lines in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese are also available
• text QUITNOW to 333888 (message and data rates may apply)
• the free quitSTART app
• online at smokefree.gov

Sources

Based on "Dana S.’s Story," Tips From Former Smokers campaign, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain, with Dana’s words rewritten in hubnx’s own words.

• The film is the agency's own low-resolution copy, recovered from the Internet Archive's record of cdc.gov.