STEPHEN ABERNETHY

My Name is Stephen I am aged 47. I was 14 when I had my first ciggie so I looked like one of the boys and so - fitted in. If I was to take an average then I would say I smoked at least 30 ciggies a day. My wife Cindy also smoked an average of 20 per day.

Unfortunately in May last year, I suffered a heart attack. This was a very nasty shock, certainly to me but also to my wife and two young sons aged 10 and 16. I spent 37 hours in a Critical Care Unit at Broad Green hospital. During this time I had many conversations with Heart specialists and nurses. Like most people who smoke, I have often been told by medical professionals that a major cause of heart disease is smoking and like everyone, I thought “yeh, yeh, it will never happen to me.”

Lying in my hospital bed, I thought this is now the time, you must take note and listen to the advice being offered. You are still young and have a young family. I remained in the hospital for a further three days, leaving on a Thursday morning. That night my wife and I talked on various ways of improving our health and decided the most beneficial and biggest impact, would be to rid ourselves of the smoking habit.

On Friday morning we turned up at the Speke SureStart Family centre to enrol on the Fag Ends course. What we hadn’t realised was that we should have made an appointment, despite this, when the fag ends advisor heard my story she immediately called us in and offered all the advice, help and support that Fag Ends could offer.

Following discussions on different ways to stop smoking, we decided we would both use champix tablets to assist us to kick the habit. As we live in Garston for subsequent meetings we attended Garston Library on a Monday afternoon. We looked forward to our visits each week, as the support and encouragement given by Hilary was excellent.

Five months on, neither Cindy nor I have had a fag. We are very grateful to Fag Ends for helping us both. We have both tried on several occasions in the past to quit but failed. We are sure that all the help given by fag ends is what gave us the final willpower to stop smoking.

I cannot thank Hilary and Fag Ends enough, not only as we are now better off financially but our fitness levels and health are improving weekly.