I Was 32 With Lungs Like Someone Twice My Age – Sarah’s Story
I Was 32 With Lungs Like Someone Twice My Age – Sarah’s Story
My name is Sarah, I’m 32, and a doctor once told me my lungs looked like they belonged to someone twice my age.
I started smoking at 15 because everyone else did. At first it was one or two at parties, then a few behind the school gym, then “after work to unwind”. By my mid-twenties I was a full-time smoker. I didn’t really count how many I had; I just made sure I never ran out.
I used to tell myself it wasn’t that bad. I was still young. I could “stop any time”. And anyway, life was stressful, and cigarettes were my one thing.
Then my lungs decided they’d had enough.
The Night I Couldn’t Catch My Breath
It happened on a random Tuesday.
I was at home, getting my daughter ready for bed. I walked up the stairs carrying a basket of laundry and suddenly my chest tightened. Not the usual “I’m a bit unfit” tightness. This felt sharp and wrong, like someone was sitting on my chest.
I put the basket down on the landing and tried to laugh it off, but I couldn’t get a full breath in. My heart was pounding. My hands started shaking. My daughter was asking me where her favourite pyjamas were and I couldn’t answer because I was too busy trying not to panic.
I made it through bedtime, somehow, then sat on the edge of my own bed and wondered if I should call an ambulance.
In the end I didn’t. I told myself maybe it was stress. Maybe it was anxiety. Maybe I was overreacting.
But two days later, when it happened again just walking from the car to the supermarket, I booked a doctor’s appointment.
You Can’t Keep Doing This to Your Lungs
Sitting in that room, I felt like a kid in trouble.
The doctor listened to my chest, asked about my smoking, my family history, my job. I tried to minimise it. “A few a day,” I said, even though we both knew it was more.
He didn’t give me a lecture or a scary speech. What he said was worse, in a way, because it was so calm.
“You’re 32,” he said. “But your lungs are showing early signs of the kind of damage I’d expect in someone much older. If you carry on, this doesn’t get better. It gets harder. You’re already feeling that.”
I nodded, stared at the floor and tried not to cry.
He talked about quitting. I nodded again, promised I’d “try”. Inside, I had this sinking feeling. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the advice. It wasn’t the first time I’d promised to stop.
What scared me most was the thought that maybe I actually couldn’t.
All the Times I Tried and Gave Up
I’d tried to quit so many times before.
I did the classic New Year’s resolution quit. That lasted eight days.
I quit when I was pregnant, then started again “just socially” after my daughter was born. Within a month I was buying packs again and hiding how many I was really having.
I tried vaping “just to cut down”. Within weeks, I was using both, nicotine in my hand even more than before.
Every time I slipped, the shame got heavier. My family would be happy for me when I said I was quitting, then quietly disappointed when they saw a packet in my bag again.
By the time I left that doctor’s appointment, with lungs “older than me” and a child who still liked to climb all over me and make me run around the park, I was terrified. But I was also exhausted by the idea of failing again.
Finding Unpuff When I Was Just Looking for Hope
I stopped when I saw the words:
“Quitting is hard. Unpuff makes it easier.”
That felt honest. Not “effortless”, not “instant”, just easier.
I downloaded it thinking I’d just have a look. I’d used apps before and usually deleted them within a day. But this one felt different from the home screen.
It didn’t shout at me or try to scare me. It asked me straight questions: how long I’d been smoking, how much, what my main reasons were for wanting to stop. I typed “my health” and “my daughter” and felt my throat tighten.
The app showed me what I’d been avoiding: how much I’d spent over the years, how many cigarettes roughly had gone into my lungs. It made me feel sick, but it was the kind of sick I needed to feel.
I didn’t set some dramatic “never again” date. I started with a simpler promise: today, I’ll follow the plan here and see what happens.
Learning to Survive Cravings Without Falling Apart
The first few days were rough.
The cravings weren’t just “I want a cigarette”. They were waves that hit out of nowhere. After coffee. After a long email. When my daughter had a tantrum. When I walked past someone smoking in the street.
Before Unpuff, that feeling always ended the same way: me outside, lighting up.
This time, every time that wave hit, I opened the app. I didn’t overthink it. I just did whatever it told me to do next.
Sometimes it was a short breathing exercise. Sometimes it was a quick check-in asking what I was feeling, stressed, bored, angry, sad. Sometimes it was a reminder of how many days in a row I’d already made it.
It didn’t magically erase all the cravings. But it gave me something to do besides fight with my own brain.
When I did slip and have a cigarette, I logged it. That’s the part that surprised me: instead of telling me I’d failed, Unpuff asked what had triggered it. I realised patterns I’d never really seen before. Arguments. Tiredness. Certain times of day.
For once, a slip didn’t turn into “oh well, I’ve ruined it now, I may as well go back properly”. It became a bump that I could recover from.
The Day I Ran Without Thinking About My Lungs
The first real sign things were changing came on a Saturday at the park.
My daughter wanted to race me to the little hill near the swings. She grabbed my hand and shouted,
“Come on, Mummy!”
I almost said no. I almost told her I was too tired, that my shoes weren’t right, that we’d walk instead. That’s what I normally did because I was scared of feeling that horrible tightness in my chest.
For some reason, that day, I just said yes and ran.
It was clumsy and not very fast and I laughed the whole way, but when we got to the top, I noticed something I hadn’t felt in a long time: I was out of breath, but I wasn’t terrified.
My chest wasn’t burning. I wasn’t fighting for air. I didn’t have that sharp, panicky “something is wrong” feeling.
I just stood there, breathing hard, holding my little girl’s hand as she announced she had “won the race”, and I realised my lungs were… coping.
That night, I opened Unpuff and looked at how long it had been since my last cigarette. I looked at the money saved. I looked at the streak of days I’d made it through, even with a few bumps.
For the first time, I believed something might actually be different this time.
The Follow-Up I Was Dreading
Going back to the doctor for my follow-up was nerve-racking. I half-expected him to tell me it was too late anyway.
But as soon as I walked in, he said I looked healthier. He listened to my chest again, asked about my breathing and my symptoms. I told him I’d been using an app to help me quit. I told him about the race in the park.
He smiled and said something I’ll never forget:
“You’ve given your lungs a chance. That’s the most important part.”
He didn’t pretend everything was magically fixed. He didn’t promise nothing would ever go wrong. But he confirmed what I was starting to feel: my body was, slowly, getting some of its strength back.
I walked out of that appointment lighter than I’d walked in. I still had work to do. But I was no longer walking around thinking, “My lungs are failing and I can’t do anything about it.”
How Life Feels Now
I’m not the perfect ex-smoker. I still get stressed. I still have days where my brain whispers, “A cigarette would help right now.” But those whispers don’t feel like orders anymore.
I can climb the stairs without rehearsing excuses in case I need to stop halfway. I don’t wake up every morning with that horrible, dry, rattling cough. I can chase my daughter around the park and only complain because I’m thirty-two, not because my lungs are screaming.
I still use Unpuff. Not because I’m hanging on by a thread, but because I like being reminded of what I’ve done. I like seeing the money that didn’t go up in smoke. I like seeing the days, weeks and now months without cigarettes add up.
Most of all, I like knowing that when I get scared about my health and I still do, sometimes, I can honestly say I’m not adding to the damage anymore. I’m finally doing something to help myself.
If You’re Where I Was
If you’re reading this and you’ve had that moment where your chest scared you, where the stairs felt like a mountain, where a doctor hinted your lungs are older than the rest of you, I know exactly how heavy that fear feels.
I also know how easy it is to believe you “can’t” quit because you’ve tried before and it didn’t last.
What changed things for me wasn’t suddenly becoming stronger. It was having something like Unpuff in my pocket that let me struggle without giving up. It turned cravings into moments I could manage, not automatic defeats. It turned slips into lessons instead of the end.
I wish I had taken my lungs seriously sooner. But I am incredibly grateful that at thirty-two, with “old” lungs and a little girl who wants me around for a long time, I finally did something real about it.
My lungs aren’t perfect. Neither am I.
But I’m breathing easier now. And that’s a second chance I didn’t think I’d get.
— Sarah, 32, South Africa
