John Farnham

[red750]

As you may have heard, John Farnham underwent an eleven and a half hour operation to remove a cancerous growth from his mouth. The operation was reported as being successful, but he will have a lengthy recovery period. It is understood that he was a pack-a-day smoker.

[facthunter]

 If any here are still smoking give it up. Best single act to help you live longer you can do. I was a chronic smoker lighting one off the other. Cigarettes and coffee habit from flying mostly at night. It's very addictive so just go cold turkey and flick your brain to "I'm a non smoker". You'll get the pangs but less often as time passes. Nothing worthwhile is easy. Everything tastes and smells better. You , your  clothes and car smell better...Nev

[old man emu]

My wife had the best way to give up cigarettes. One day, twenty years ago, she said, "They're too expensive. We're not buying them any more." Victory to the Minister for Finance. The habit was snuffed out by the tightening of the purse strings.

 

Are we going to launch into a discussion of vapping?

[onetrack]

It never ceases to amaze me the number of people I still see smoking - despite all the evidence, all the warnings and all the constant anti-smoking advertising. Just goes to show what a terribly addictive habit it is.

I am glad I have never had any urge to smoke, and therefore have never ingested any tobacco products directly (I probably ingested a fair amount indirectly!).

 

I'm now more concerned about all the other carcinogenic stuff I've accidentally ingested over the decades - asbestos dust from brakes and clutches, loads of silica dust from regularly disturbing soils, petrol and diesel fumes, adhesives, paints, lead products - it's wonder I've got this far with no major ill-effects.

But perhaps I was born with the ability to shake off any bad effects from this stuff - like old Percy McTaggart, a local whose wife was friends with my mother. Old Percy started in the W.A. Railways at age 14, lagging rail carriages and locos with asbestos.

He also took up smoking at age 14 when he started work, and could then afford cigarettes. Then he spent years spraying the rail carriages with lead-based paint! After working in the Railways for decades, he left and took up house painting - using more lead paint!

 

But none of that fazed old Percy! - he lived to the ripe old age of 94, and died of natural causes! I hate to think how long he'd have lived, if he'd lived well away from carcinogenic substances!

 

Edited August 24, 2022 by onetrack

[facthunter]

I shouldn't have deflected  the topic  which was relating to Johnny Farnhams situation but I'm GLAD I did stop. Whatever reason works for you. Use cost ,the way people react. Who'd kiss an ashtray ANYTHING that helps. I wish I'd never started and am mortified I blew smoke on other crew when I think of it. Nev

[willedoo]

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

I'm now more concerned about all the other carcinogenic stuff I've accidentally ingested over the decades - asbestos dust from brakes and clutches, loads of silica dust from regularly disturbing soils, petrol and diesel fumes, adhesives, paints, lead products - it's wonder I've got this far with no major ill-effects.

onetrack, you forgot to mention welding fumes. Not good stuff.

[willedoo]

In my experience, there's only one way to give up and that's cold turkey. Patches and stuff is just like giving an alcoholic a beer. The only sure fire way to give up forever is to die.  In other words, once you give up, you have to spend the rest of your life making sure it stays that way. Cold turkey alone is not enough. It has to be combined with the right reason and mindset. Most people who try and fail haven't worked that part out. Subconsciously, they know if it gets too tough, they can just admit defeat and go back to it. Right from the start, you need to get it through your head that it's for the rest of your life until they put you in the ground. Not one more smoke ever. This business of "I might try giving up" is BS. Wrong mindset. If that's the mental attitude, don't bother putting yourself through hell for a few weeks or months. Save yourself a lot of pain and keep smoking until you finally figure it out. It would be the same with any addiction I would guess.

[red750]

Tonight's report says John had part of his jaw removed. It is unsure whether he will be able to talk again, let alone sing.

 

Another TV icon who underwent the same surgery is former Hey Hey It's Saturday funny man John Blackman. Here are photos of him before and after the operation. He was interviewed on the news tonight and he has a very narrow triangular-shaped face with a very pointed chin.

 

  

[onetrack]

I guess the massive surgery is better than the option of dying painfully from a variety of cancer. People get used to how you look. None of us get any better-looking, as we age!

 

Emphysema is another dreadful thing to contract from smoking. I've known people who had to drag oxygen bottles around with them constantly, just so they could keep breathing, after contracting emphysema.

[facthunter]

Don't count the days since you gave up either. THAT doesn't help.  I had at least 3 goes at giving up and one was for about 10years and extremely disappointing to have happen after that long time. I don't exactly know when I stopped the last time but it's a long time ago now. Occasionally I have night mares that I'm smoking again and it's so real that I look for empty ashtrays when I first wake up.. I've had mercury, Nitro benzene, Nitro methane, Lead  and asbestos truck  and army duck Brakes and house construction and woodwork machinery dust Cyanide zinc and lead containing paints and silica dust. One place I worked at making blast furnace  Refractory firebricks I was told 2 years and you're finished  by the People who worked there. relating to the particular job I was doing. The pay was good and it helped fund my flying training. Nothing has shown up on a chest ray or MRI yet.   Nev

[onetrack]

Gee, I forgot about Cyanide dust, I've inhaled a bit of that too in my Gold mining times, re-treating tailings and ore with leach vats. Perhaps working in the open air most of the time, helps.

It's amazing how much has changed in just 40 years. We used to buy 50kgs drums of Potassium Cyanide, no training needed, just produce a miners permit to buy it - haul it around in the back of the ute, go pick up the food supplies from the supermarket, leave the cyanide unattended - nowadays, you need to go through training courses, can't transport cyanide without Dangerous Goods certified vehicles, and more training, obligated to obey a truckload of legislation, and face massive penalties if even so much as a speck of cyanide dust escapes - I don't know how we survived.

 

Part of this excessive OH&S BS came from an episode where an old bloke working on the lease next door to my lease, picked up a 50kg drum of cyanide in Kalgoorlie, didn't close his tailgate properly, and the drum fell out when he roared around the T-junction in Kambalda.

Someone in power found the drum, reported it to the highest authority in the land - the media seized on it, had a field day screeching about toxic poisons being dropped willy-nilly all over the countryside - and that was it, the ordure hit more than just a fan, it hit the exhaust blast from a RR RB211 - and the pollies promptly passed all these laws treating every cyanide user in gold treatment like they were dealers in Zyklon B, and spent all their time leaving it outside schools. It's incredible how things have gone, to the extreme opposite end of the safety spectrum. 

[facthunter]

Cyanide is a cumulative poison  It's in 2 pack paint. High flying  planes also get exposed to radiation in a gas. High hours crew often get more issues with Cancer. (They don't talk about that much  though. )  Nev

[pmccarthy]

Cyanide (CN) is used a compound with either pottasium or sodium and immediately poisonous if ingested, but if you survive there is nothing lingering, it oxidises. In air it oxidises too, so it doesn't hang around in the environment forever. Unlike arsenic or lead, which are elements. However, you can get poisoned by chronic exposure to low levels of hydrogen cyanide gas.

[willedoo]

Cyanide poisoning is a form of hypoxia. It differs from high altitude hypoxia in that there's normal delivery of O2 to the bloodstream and cells, but the cells can't take it up. Flying over 40,000 without pressure breathing gear ends the same way, but due to insufficient pressure to bond the O2 molecules to the hemoglobin. One is not getting the O2 to the bloodstream, the other is getting it but can't use it.

 

I've had carbon monoxide poisoning and that wasn't pleasant. Luckily I got away from the source before blacking out, but remember the head spinning and a feeling of pins and needles all through the body. I was on the monkey board of a diamond drilling rig at the time, so couldn't easily escape the fumes.

[facthunter]

To get your Pressurisation  endorsement you had to do a stint in a Baro chamber where they  simulate being over 30,000 feet. You get a feeling of euphoria and write awfully bad and your fingernails go blue. I believe  from what I've heard snuffing yourself with CO is not a very nice way to go.

   Back to Johnny He's been subject to some pretty radical surgery and has a way to go yet. I wish him all the best from here on.    Nev

Edited August 25, 2022 by facthunter