Before we left the hospital, we went to meet the surgeon who would operate on him. The surgeon wanted to know about my husband’s family history. He was told that high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and stroke are no stranger to the patient’s family.

High blood pressure, if uncontrolled, can lead to stroke, a heart attack or kidney failure. Diabetes tends to run in families. Diabetes-related diseases are synonymous with those of high blood pressure. My husband, with his fondness for rich, fatty food, must be a good candidate for a heart attack or a stroke that is waiting to happen.

In my presence, the good surgeon posed him a question. “Are you a smoker?” my husband hesitated before he answered. I was just as eager to know.

When I met my husband, he was smoking 30 sticks a day. By the time I agreed to marry him, he understood that either he had to stop his habit or I would join him and smoke ourselves silly.

He decided to stop. For years I had believed it was all my doing that he stopped smoking. Wow, he gave up smoking for me. It is a good reminiscence that love can be such a powerful stuff.

Many months ago, I’d had my suspicion that my husband had started smoking again. My brother did alert me to the possibility. Perhaps, it takes a smoker to catch a smoker.

I smelled his shirt, t-shirt and his mouth. He was always chewing gums or sucking sweets. When I found a used packet of cigarettes in his glove compartment, he told me his golfer friend left it behind. If he was guilty, he covered his track very well.

Back in the surgeon’s room, honesty won over. It would be stupid to lie to his doctor when his heart was at stake. He had been smoking for over a year, stressed by his job, and practically surrounded by smokers who offered cigarettes to him before they lit theirs. Somehow, his will-power was worn down and after the first puff, there was no holding back.

He had been smoking 10 sticks a day. In normal circumstances, I would have been furious but it wasn’t normal and he might be dying.

I had often told him what things were bad for him, and he listened but not hearing. If he had ever thought about the things I’d said, he just never thought it would happen to him.