Instead of cinnamon, you can spray the cut end wit a solution of Physan or Consan. It is a disinfectant that kills most pathogens on contact. When I divide my catts, I look to see if there any black pseudo bulbs. If so, I cut the out all blacken bulbs and rhizome until I see green. Then again, spray with Physan the roots and cut end. Usually a red hot flamed pruner will just seal the cut end anyway. I used to apply black pruning paint on the cut end. I've gotten lazy. But the heated shear cauterizes the cut. Each time I make a cut, I reheat my pruner even when I'm working on the same plant. This is true if you just cut out a diseased portion of the plant or roots. Flame the shear again. Use a portable propane torch. Get it red hot. Kills all pathogens including virus. I wouldn't dip my tools in Physan or Clorox because it oxidizes the metal. Ruins the tool. You can apply the hormone gell to or spray Keiki grow solution on the lead and dormant eyes. Stuff works. At least Keiki Grow. I've applied the solution directly to my catt's dormant eyes and they've popped. Plus new roots. If there is a systemic disease, you may need to spray the plant with a systemic fungicide (like those used for roses: Subdue, Zyban etc, depends on the disease). Again, if you have a greehouse or shadehouse, just leave the plant on a bench and mist it every so often. It will soon start to out out a new growth and roots. I always put my backbulbs under my main greenhouse bench and leave them alone. Soon they sprout roots and new growth and I pot them up. With Keiki Grow, I've even put a drop of the stuff directly from the bottle on dormant eyes. Stuff is expensive but works. At least for me. You can dilute it with water (a few drops per ounce) and spray the lead and even the leaves. I do this AFTER I water the plants and let them dry out. I don't want to dilute the Keiki Grow stuff too much.

On smoking... ready to go there again today. Man, the body wants to just smoke offhand and by nature and avoid trying not to something fierce. Day before yesterday it just went out of my mind for hours but that will not be so. There are NO meaningless ciggys. Michelle, I'm so glad you know someone who tried acupuncture with success. I had wondered about that. I think I will go after my trip, maybe before! I had a great acupuncturist that helped by back a lot but not enough to justify the unfortunate cost. Short-term issues I'd definitely try with him! Pete, you are 100% right, I know from my dad's experience with AA, and from how darned addicted I am. I don't think I can EVER handle one after I stop. Nicotineless, OK. OK for a long while anyway, I appease my addict brain. Msjam, Happy Happy Chantrix Dance! Oh, I'm hearing such good things about that drug; it is great to hear from an observer of a bad addict. Yes, my appointment with my doc is soon, and I'm definitely trying that. Thanks! vjcamp, Congratulations!!! It slipped up on me, too... hanging out with my club and punk friends and I guess we thought it was cool but not consciously. Eventually I couldn't NOT smoke in my parents house fighting with my BF on the phone. I was a goner after that. Senior year and now half my life!!! Susan, congratulations!! Hey, roses baby, always roses or decor. Right now it's more expensive to quit and there's something very wrong with that equation! I'm trying to be conscious of every cigarette, definitely, and remember all the bad. Foghorn, congrats on two counts!! Yeah, no 'just try one' for me... hey I thought when I started that I'd never get hooked!! April, 12...man! Congratulations!! I hadn't even thought of the fact that I will be so proud, but I will. Good motivator there. Thank you! Debra, so good to see you!! My Ex quit pretty easily, but he did not have nic fits like I get. Unfortunately, it's not just the gnawing craving but I literally get sleepy, confused, etc. I am trying to take the UK trip as the big step RE quitting. I don't know that I can go all the way, but I swear I will stop all but the most 'crucial' of cigarettes. I'm afraid to try more with all the work I have to do there :( Hopefully the Chantrix and change of locale will allow me to go farther... we'll have to see! Hoov and Sue, I am so sorry about your fathers. When my mother was in the hospital she asked me to quit smoking [she was dying of cancer but never smoked] and it pains me that I could not stop for her then. It is indescribable how strong a hold cigarettes can have, and I am so sorry that y'all had to be hurt so by that. It is a very sad thing, and infuriating that we smokers don't 'get' that when we smoke the first one. Cupshaped, Strength to you!!! If it helps, you can imagine a day, a YEAR [!!] without a cigarette, so you will succeed! Remember the bad, the hurting of folks and yourself... you are RIGHT THERE. Do they have Chantrix in Denmark? Worth a try! However you do it, keep it up and the best of luck!! Julie, good luck!!!!! What I have read about Chantrix, 'you ain't seen nothin' yet'. I hope so! One drag is excellent going in to it! Keep up the good work! Remember there are nicotine-free cigs out there, non-nicotine inhalers to drag on.... let me know if you need me to send you a couple; I'm stocking up!! Hopefully my QT watch comes today, the doc appt is soon, and I'm thinking of my UK trip as an exciting venture in many ways :)

Thanks Daniella. I was gonna try Chantix - until I spoke to my friend who had such a bad reaction to it. She said she had to go sleep it off. The others says it makes them sleepy, tired. They're slowly getting used to it. Baby aspirin is about where I'm at - except for excedrin for migranes (has caffine) - otherwise - unless it specifically says for daytime - it's gonna put me in the drool zone. (Eyes glased, drool from my lip.) And unfortunately, I've got one of those jobs where I have to stay/be sharp. Can't be thinking through cotton. I wasecited until she told me she started thinking about it and what it was doing to her brain, and what it was attaching itself to, and why she felt so awful. She almost took food out of her mouth in a restaurant because she didn't think she could swallow it. I'm thinking the patch and gum is gonna be my route again. I just need DH to agree to do it with me. Whole family smokes. I won't be able to do it in the face of everyone else smoking. And I can't ask him to do it right now - heavy stressers in our lives right now. Soon though, very soon.

I quit smoking my beloved pipes and cigars in the early 80's after losing my hearing on several occasions and ending up in the hospital 5 times to get it back. Tests showed a severe allergy to tobacco. My ENT was not sure if I were losing my hearing due to the severe allergy of if I was losing it because nicotine, causing artery constriction, cut off the supply to my inner ears. I didn't know if I was going to stop, and it was very hard because smoking can be physically addictive and psychologically addictive, of course. The physical addiction property of nicotine, as you all know, has been made worse by manufacturers who have increasingly used tobacco with higher nicotine levels and psychologically addictive because smoking is a mood changer. Studiess show that to maximize your ability to stop smoking, use multiple means. Medication can be enormously helpful. But medication alone is not nearly as effective as medication and a treatment group. Even more success with medication, a treatment group, and a support group. Even much more enhanced recovery with medication, a treatment group, a support group, and exercise. Hypnosis is also beneficial 50 percent of the time, when used alone, but that is not a very high percentage, so I seldom used it in practice as an only treatment. Much more effective when used along with the other multiple strategies. If you choose to use hypnosis, please use it as only a part of the treatment and please see a person with good credentials, not a fly-by-nighter. Ask at his her office what their training is in hypnosis. When I was smoking and saw no effects on my health, I could always separate my emotional reactions and the knowledge that one day, smoking would probably kill me, as it had my family for generations on both sides. I would think, "Well, I feel pretty well, and I don't have cancer, what the hell, I'll quit another day." My brother, 15 years older than I, was my childhood hero. I flew him back from the Virgin Islands 15 years ago to get treatment for his throat cancer. He died 3 days later. Eight months ago, my beloved niece, his daughter, who had smoked for 40 years, developed COPD and emphysema. Visiting her in the hospital in Hattisburg after emergency hospitalization because she couldn't breathe, I asked her if she had been smoking just before she was rushed to the hospital. Indignantly, she said, I KNEW you were going to ask me if I still smoke?" She thought I was fussing at her, when instead I was trying to point out the link between her emergency and smoking the night before she was hospitalized. She also then developed cancer and just before she died on the way to the hospital two months ago, she had a cigarette and couldn't breathe. After the funeral, mourners including her huysband, their grown children, and her nieces and nephews talked about how it was such a tragedy for her to die at age 55. And this was said in the parking lot, as the whole family gathered to smoke in the parking lot after the funeral. I could only shake my head as I left. One of my beautiful grand nieces, as she lit her cigarette said, "Uncle Jimmy, it's hard to find people who don't smoke." I thought that I'd save for another day the fact that our state, Mississippi, has the nation's highest percentage of smokers, at 25 percent. I also saved for another day the information that with both her and her husband smoking, their close relationships among friend will be likely limited to other smokers. France puts in a country-wide smoking ban in restaurants this week, as their research shows half their smokers die os cancer and another 5,000 die each year from second-hand breathing. I well remember my dad saying that he'd rather smoke than live a few more years. Such is the power of this addiction to change normal thought. I remember how he made fun of his elderly cardiologist, who, speaking in a foreign accent, said, "Mr. Chaney, each cigarette you smoke is living driving a nail in your coffin." And we'd all laugh--my dad was a hilarious guy. When he died of his fourth heart attack, sitting and smoking at the kitchen table with my mother in 1972, we never again brought up our dad's hilarious sense of humor making fun of his heart doctor. To my mother's credit, she stopped smoking at age 65 after she developed emphysema. When she couldn't breathe right, she quit. Two successful fights with cancer had not been enough for her to stop. But she did, and she lived until nearly 80. Truly I will hope for your internal strength to go to those treatment programs and to stay with them. Fighting an addiction alone typically subverts your attempts at quitting and reduces you to using "strong will", an ineffective idea in treating addictions. As we all know. Jim