- In 2017 Warren Stuart was diagnosed with stage one lung cancer. Smoking was part of skating culture in the 1980s, and he was a smoker for 30 years
- After quitting the habit and beating cancer, the 51-year-old Hongkonger is out to warn fellow skaters young and old about tobacco’s dangers
Warren Stuart, who celebrated his 51st birthday this month, is well aware of how lucky he is to be alive.
In July 2017, Stuart went to his doctor with a nagging cough. He was diagnosed with bronchitis, but when a couple of rounds of antibiotics failed to clear it, an X-ray " followed by more tests and scans " confirmed his fears: he had stage one lung cancer.
"I remember the day the doctor gave me the bad news," says Stuart. "Nothing prepares you for it and it's tempting to be in denial, but the prospect of having a disease that in many cases becomes terminal is too real to ignore."
In October that same year Stuart checked into the Hong Kong Baptist Hospital for surgery to remove the midlobe on his right lung.
Three weeks after surgery the avid skateboarder " Stuart is head coach for the Hong Kong skateboarding team, judges at overseas competitions and played a role in the 2019 opening of the Lai Chi Kok Park Skatepark " was back on his board.
As well as skating, Stuart attributes his post-surgery recovery to yoga and dynamic and static stretching.
"I was lucky " I got it early before it had a chance to spread," he says. Early lung cancer has no obvious symptoms. "The bronchitis really saved my life," he adds.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in Hong Kong. In 2017, the Chinese city recorded 3,890 deaths from lung cancer, 27.1 per cent of all cancer deaths. The risk of lung cancer increases with age, and one of the biggest causes is long-term smoking.
According to the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health, a smoker increases the risk of lung cancer by 900 per cent (10 times), and a heavy smoker increases the risk more than 1,400 per cent.
A year before his diagnosis, Stuart was celebrating one year of being tobacco-free and says he was feeling "fitter than ever".
"I was hitting the gym a few times a week and skated almost every weekend. I loved being out in the skateparks in the sun and fresh air. I thought I wasn't doing too bad for a 48-year-old."
Before breaking his addiction, Stuart had smoked for 30 years, a habit he picked up while immersed in the unhealthy skating culture of the 1980s and 90s.
"Back then we thought of ourselves as rebels and got caught up in the punk and hip-hop music scenes that glorified drugs," he says.
"We would skate the streets at night trying to avoid police and it's during those times that we'd bump into some dodgy people, you know, triad guys. We would get high, and skate, believing that skating while high was better, but of course that's just a myth. Cigarettes were the first drug I took … and the last."
Stuart, who has a seven-year-old son, Tristan, says he is grateful to have been given a second chance and credits this, in part, to the love of his friends and family, especially his wife Denise, who he has been with for almost 10 years.
"My wife was a rock during a time of crisis " so supportive and always putting on a brave face for our son Tristan," he says.
Stuart is now on a mission to spread the message about the dangers of smoking, especially among young people in China, the world's largest tobacco products producer and consumer, with 315 million smokers. He is sharing his story on websites targeting young skaters.
Smoking is a global scourge.
According to the World Health Organisation, tobacco kills up to half of its users, claiming eight million lives each year. Of those deaths, seven million are the result of direct tobacco use, while about 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
Around 80 per cent of the world's 1.1 billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries. Stuart wants to encourage people to have regular check-ups and tests to detect anything abnormal.
And to those who still smoke? "It's never too late to quit."
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