When diagnosed with chronic lung disease, Leonard Nimoy was not happy, feeling that it was unfair to have had this happen so many years after quitting smoking.
The actor had stopped smoking roughly thirty years ago.
Diagnosed last May, Nimoy said, “I thought, ‘This is unfair. I quit a long time ago. Why is this happening to me?'”
“But it’s a lesson that I had to learn,” he said. “I damaged the lung cells many years ago and then as age begins the damage of lung cells as well you begin to feel it. So, it’s something that can stick up on you later.”
Nimoy uses an oxygenator, not a tank of oxygen. The oxygenator, explained Nimoy during an appearance on Piers Morgan Live, “gives me oxygen by it extracts oxygen out of the atmosphere and I get it up my nose when I need it.
“I’m still using it sporadically but a couple of years ago I didn’t need it at all. Now, there are days when I needed it several times a day.
“I get short of a breath and suddenly feel like I can’t get a full breath, I can’t catch my breath. So, I have to go to the machine.”
Nimoy admitted to having been a heavy smoker. “I tell people that I was an Olympic championship smoker,” he said. “If there have been a championship in the addiction, I could have qualified. I could smoke in the shower. I can smoke any place.”
Source: Contact Music
