Day 1 - Thinking about giving up

So... today I decided I would give up smoking. I've been thinking about it a lot, but can never pick a date to start. It's always 'after this event', 'next week' and so on. I always have an excuse and I can never motivate myself fully.

This week, I saw my friend Sue post on Facebook that her sister Tor (Victoria) has had the double lung transplant that she has desperately needed for a long time. She has Cystic Fibrosis, and every day is a huge struggle for her to even do the simplest of tasks. Each time they got the call to go to the hospital, they were let down last minute due to the donor not being compatible, or Tor being too ill to go though surgery. And this week, all their Christmasses came at once.

I've been following their plight for a long while now, and always wished there was something I could do to help out in some way. Sounds ridiculous, what could I do that would help? Now that Tor has been given the gift of life, it makes it much easier for me to realise that I'm abusing and destroying my perfectly functional lungs, when Tor and many other CF sufferers are desperate to just breathe even a tenth as well as I can. I feel like such an arsehole to be honest, but then we all take for granted what we have.

I signed up to JustGiving and created an account for people to sponsor me to give up smoking. My start date is 17 days from now, the 1st of November 2011. All of the donations will go straight to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and hopefully help find a cure for this debillitating disease. I signed up at about 8pm, and up until this exact point (23.38GMT) I have already raised £105 just by posting links on my Facebook and Twitter pages! I had set a target for £250 and a target of £500 for my 'team' to raise. Well no one has joined my team yet, but it's early days yet! Due to the rapid amount of donations, I've actually increased the target to £500 individually, and £1000 for my team! I'm aiming high!

I'm so grateful for all the people that have donated so far, it's such a nice feeling to know that people aren't all complete twats, and some do care for others. I really hope that I raise a decent amount of money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, but regardless, every little helps right?

Just to plug my pages again now!

www.justgiving.com/LaurenCHollands

and if you want to join my team, whether you want to run a marathon, give up smoking, wax your arse crack, the link for this is:

www.justgiving.com/teams/happylungs

I hope you enjoy reading about my progress, and a bit further down the line, my totally uncontrollable swearing fits due to my nicotine withdrawels ;)

Lauren x