The year started off strong for my sister Lúcia. His toy store, on a cool street in Vila Romana, in São Paulo, closed again in the red, which would already become “default” in 2024. What was not expected, perhaps because no one wanted to think about it, was that a second myocardial infarction could happen, and right at the dawn of 2025. And it came, as in 2018, on a Saturday night, January 11th.
No warnings about the dangers of smoking in the last six years were heeded by her, whether from doctors or from her brothers and nephews, who were always more lenient with the habit; Even the account of the scene of her ex-husband begging, as practically the last act of his life, for a cigarette, seems to have touched her.
It was in 2004, and I was an eyewitness: Edgard barely had the strength to hold his cigarette – I think he preferred Chanceller, “the thin one who satisfies” – in that hospital bed, a concession made to him by the doctor in the manner of a prison guard in those films where the person sentenced to death faces his last minutes. Edgard was shaking profusely, but he must have managed to swallow. I hope so.
In a loose definition, the cigarette is the end of the sting, as so many generations that followed my sister, now 66 years old, know. She has been smoking for five uninterrupted decades, an addiction that at the time of her adoption was so glamorized in cinema, TV and everyday life.
It is unlikely that at the end of the 1960s it was said that nicotine was the most addictive substance known, or one of the most, as doctor Drauzio Varella so systematically reminds us right here in this Sheet. Which is more addictive than crack.
When I quote Drauzio for the umpteenth time to Lúcia, she grimaces, acquiesces somewhat mechanically, and even replies that Fernando, the doctor’s brother, died prematurely at the age of 44 from lung cancer. And, perhaps because I was already much more advanced in years than Fernando was when he died, I got lost and disappeared for another cigarette.
In the book “The Emperor of All Maladies – a Biography of Cancer”, oncologist and great writer Siddhartha Mukherjee tells the story, among many others, of the cigarette industry’s public relations and propaganda efforts to deny the science that linked the lung cancer product; and recalls the pouring of “tens, then hundreds, of millions of dollars into post-war advertising campaigns”.
The author writes that advertising became more sophisticated, and cigarette brands were designed for different professional categories and social groups. “More doctors smoke Camels”, showed an advertisement on the fourth cover of Life magazine in 1952, one of those collected by Siddhartha.
When Lúcia finally returned from the ICU, we learned that her heart capacity had reduced by 50%. There was blockage of the same previously compromised artery in which a stent had been implanted in 2018. According to doctors, this situation made the battle for life after Saturday’s heart attack much more intense.
Not even that, I think almost without melancholy, will be enough to divert her from another cigarette in a few days.
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