I quit smoking in 1985 after 19 years of smoking. I was told my lungs would self-heal. Two weeks shy of my 71st birthday and 38 years after quitting smoking, I was diagnosed with lung cancer-an incidental finding on a CT scan for a gallbladder that was acting up.
My surgical oncologist, who removed the entire upper lobe of my left lung, told me that the external damage to my lungs had been repaired, BUT even though my lungs were pink and fully functioning, they had been permanently damaged and fragile, which is why even a mild chest cold turns into bronchitis, pneumonia, or serious inflammation.
Normal people get over a chest cold in a week or ten days. I take weeks or months, and with each incident of pneumonia, I incur permanent scarring in my lungs. And this was before the cancer and surgery that took 20% of my lung capacity away, and before I underwent radiation for a second tumor which showed up only 4 months later and resulted in new scar tissue in the place where that tumor had been.
You understand the core, right?