QUIT SMOKING STORY: 260 QUIT SMOKING

One appointment leading to seeing 260 patients is something most doctors dream to have but not easy to acquire. That is exactly what we got one day twenty some years ago.

It so happened that nurse in charge of a chemical plant in Texas and near Louisiana got a phone call from home corporate office in Ohio to look for quit smoking method or service to help the Texas plant's smokers to quit smoking. A few days later, the nurse called back to use acupuncture, but got a "No" order from the home office, and keep on searching to identify a most effective method their own plant smokers have used successfully.

A few weeks later, the nurse called back and reported that she had found out 5 of their smokers have used gum to quit but none of the five was successful, but three went to Peking Acupuncture Clinic to have acupuncture treatment to quit and all three were remained smoke free. Thus, the order was given to the plant nurse to use acupuncture, something completely new to the nurse and the corporate manager in charge in Ohio.

The phone call from the plant nurse said that they had one hundred smokers who wanted to come to Houston to quit smoking and would like to find out if we can go to the plant to render the quit smoking service instead of all one hundred having to drive to Houston.

Arrangement was then made for us to go to make multiple trips to the the plant on weekends. But as those plant smokers quit every week, words spread around and more and more smokers emerged and when we were done, we counted 260.

Even though, giving treatments to so many smokers at the plant did not allow us to render as good treatments as we could do at our clinic, the result was very good. Just last year, more than 27 years after we provided the quit smoking service at the plant, a lady whose uncle and aunt were among the 260 we treated also came to our clinic to quit smoking and brought us two rather interesting stories.

Story No. 1: Ten years after we made the numerous trips to provide quit smoking services, the plant conducted a survey to find our how many of those 260 smokers were still smoke free. The figure was not the best we like to hear, but fair enough as 90% were still smoke free ten years after their initial treatment.

Story No. 2: Uncle and aunt of the lady were heavy smokers. Right after they quit, they decided to use the money they save from quit to build a swimming pool, and they did.