I have children, of course, around my age… We used to play in the living room while our parents smoked cigarettes… The smell used to feel strange to me back then, as if something was stuck in my throat… I remember coughing a lot at the end of those nights. After a while, I didn’t want guests to come anymore. That’s childhood for you…

I was born a bit fragile, to begin with. Just a little over 2 kilograms. They put me in an incubator at Hacettepe. Later on, I would become very familiar with the corridors of Hacettepe from the start… I waited a lot in front of the green-tiled walls of the Children’s Clinic, coughing incessantly later on. My mother was a heavy smoker. I am the firstborn, and maybe they didn’t dare to have another sibling after dealing with me so much in emergencies. Or maybe I just felt that way. After dealing with so much in the emergency rooms, they probably didn’t have the courage to have another child. I know my mother didn’t quit smoking during pregnancy; she continued even after I was diagnosed with asthma. They just didn’t smoke around me anymore. But I could still smell it from the other room. I got along well with doctors. Once a doctor said, “The cigarettes you smoked during pregnancy affected the birth weight; that’s where the weakness in the system started,” to my mother. Nowadays, I hear that some pregnant women are allowed to smoke three cigarettes a day to avoid stress. It makes my blood boil… I want to say, “You’re poisoning those babies in the womb…” I say…

There were also car trips. The Renault 12 of that time… We would all pile up and go on a picnic, several families in a convoy. And smoking continued in the car. Later on, during vacations, my father once had an argument with a guy. They were smoking on the bus. My father shouted, “The child has asthma, we just stopped for a break, and you’re smoking in this tiny bus.” The conductor intervened. That’s when I saw regret in my father’s eyes. In fact, one of the reasons for my asthma was the cigarettes smoked by him, my mother, and friends next to me.

I have many memories of emergency services. The steam machine’s mask covering my mouth and nose… It made a strange sound… Like a sizzle… You would follow the end of the medicine from its reservoir… It wasn’t available in Turkey at that time. My father had brought one from Germany. I used to show it to my friends who came over, look, my father brought it all the way from Germany. Now I don’t have to go to the emergency room every time; sometimes taking the medicine at home helps…

That’s how it was with cigarettes back then. No one listened when they smoked, especially not with kids around. They smoked when pregnant. Are there still such people now? Yes. They go to the barber to dye their hair, claiming they are pregnant, but they continue to smoke. It is now known that the baby in the womb becomes addicted to nicotine. You’re giving the same poison through the umbilical cord. Later, when you smoke around the child, the risk of asthma increases significantly, and the child becomes much more vulnerable to diseases. The child becomes familiar with doctors, even during play with friends, it becomes problematic…

As someone with asthma, what I would say to parents is… If you love your children, don’t expose them to smoke. If you want to spend healthier and longer times with them, quit this thing too…

With love…