A Physiotherapist at Nottingham University Hospital, Helen is also a Councillor, representing the Bilborough ward in Nottingham.
With parents who both smoked until the early 2000s, Helen has a personal as well as professional interest in the smoker’s journey to quitting.
In her role as a physiotherapist, Helen has treated smokers living with a range of smoking-related illnesses, including cancer, and specifically during her time in thoracic surgery she treated smokers going through surgery for lung cancer. Latterly she has also worked in palliative care, looking after patients with terminal cancer caused by smoking.
She stresses that in dealing with smokers she always comes from a stance of not judging, recognising that smoking is an addiction, and how quitting is a difficult thing to do.
There's absolutely no judgment from me at all, because we all get to where we are in life in a various different number of journeys, but they've always got my support and help and guidance in in getting them to where they want to be.
Helen recognises the importance of getting support to quit, and how smokers have a better chance of quitting with support than they do on their own.
So often we have patients at the hospital who want to quit or who are unable to smoke while they're in the hospital. I am a huge advocate for all the support that's available. I'm aware of the support systems that we have in the city, and I will always signpost people to those support systems as well as ensuring they get any of the nicotine replacement therapies that they need while they're in-patients
Helen’s personal experience with her parents who smoked has shaped how she feels about smoking and has influenced her choice of roles as a physio. Both of Helen’s parents succeeded in quitting around 20 years ago, though the journey was a tough one.
It was probably the 15th or 16th time both of them had tried to quit. At the time, the nicotine gum was a new thing. My dad was a lifelong smoker of around 30 a day. He never bothered with the patches. It was never something that appealed to him. But he chewed the gum, and he still struggled. I think he had more of a physical addiction, and he found it difficult.
Unfortunately, a year or so after quitting, Helen’s dad was diagnosed with a squamous cell carcinoma. The process to diagnosis was complicated and fraught, and it took over six months before they found the tumours through neck surgery. Helen emphasises how important it is to go to your GP if you are worried about anything.
Following diagnosis, the treatment regime of six cycles of chemotherapy and 30 fractions of radiotherapy was extremely hard on her dad. Helen describes the heavy emotional toll this all had on the rest of the family too, as they struggled to support their loved one.
My mom hates smoking. She blames it for all the pain that she's been through in the last 20 years.
Happily, Helen’s father came through treatment successfully, though he lives on a daily basis with residual symptoms - resulting from the cancer and subsequent treatment - that make life a bit more difficult.
From your perspective as a Councillor, what are you thoughts on smoking?
My personal story definitely feeds into this. If it hadn't been for the indoor smoking ban making it more difficult for people to smoke, I believe my parents would still smoke today. I think the stress of my dad being unwell would have meant they would never have been able to stop. So, I believe one part of the solution is to make it less convenient for people to smoke. That is what will make people less likely to smoke, and certainly less likely to smoke as frequently. As a Council, we need to make sure that we protect all of our citizens, and we need to make sure that smoking is difficult to do in public spaces, especially where there are likely to be under eighteens.