A NEW LUNG-CANCER SCREENING HOLDS OUT HOPE FOR LONG-TIME SMOKERS WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE HAVE DIED. B Y C H A R L E S S L A C K
SMOKE SCREEN LIKE THE STATE HE’S CALLED HOME FOR ALL
of his 71 years, Lewis Mitchell’s life is in many ways a story of tobacco. For a young man in Southwest Virginia in the 1960s, lighting up for the first time was less a matter choice than a rite of passage, like driving a car or cashing a first paycheck. For 45 years, as Mitchell married, raised a family, and built a successful career in the heating and air conditioning business, cigarettes were his constant companions. They helped him get started in the morning, relieve tension at work, and unwind at the end of the day. By the time Mitchell quit his two-to-threepack-a-day habit in 2005 (and the occasional cigar a few years later), tobacco had already exacted a heavy price for that companionship. Suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema, he spent his first decade of retirement worrying about the most dreaded possibility, cancer. He says, “I guess we’re all scared of that word.”
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ILLUSTRATION: CRISTIANA COUCEIRO
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