My parents, two sisters and my brother all smoked. I’m female, almost 64 years of age and baby of the family. I’ve never smoked. My father died of lung cancer at the age of 72. My mother died of lung cancer at the age of 69. My brother died of a massive heart attack at the age of 51, and my second oldest sister is now in hospice care, dying of lung cancer. She stopped smoking 6 years ago because she had been diagnosed with 4 aneurysms in her head. She won’t make her 69th birthday in September. Our oldest sister is an alcoholic who has been institutionalized for over 40 years. She is 71 and still smokes regularly. I’m not fool enough to think that I won’t develop cancer at some point, nor do I have any hopes of living to be a ripe old age. It just doesn’t run in my family.
Speaking strictly for myself, I don’t want to get old enough to be considered “Ripe” . . .
Where is she institutionalized, a bar?