Grady Hall loves to hunt and fish, but he was having trouble getting around in the woods.
“I was smoking a pack and a half a day, sometimes two packs, and I couldn’t walk to the end of the driveway without getting out of breath,” he said. “I had to stop and rest when I was hunting.”
He knew he needed to cut back on smoking, but hadn’t been successful until he encountered a CHANGE Community Health Worker at the local bank.
“I met Shanta at the State Employee Credit Union,” he laughed. “We were both there and started talking. I told her I wanted to stop smoking, so she said to join the program and she could help.”
CHANGE includes tools to help improve nutrition and increase physical activity, but it also includes tools to help cut back and stop smoking. Hall knew he needed help, and he attributes Shanta as the source of his success.
“Her pushing me along made the difference,” he said. “She’d say ‘Come on, you can do it, you can do it.’”
Shanta called Hall twice a week while he was participating in the program, and in addition to providing him with tools and encouragement to stop smoking, she also helped him to establish a routine to take his medications regularly. She also had a solution when his cut back of cigarettes led to weight gain.
“When I tried to stop smoking, I started eating more, so she said, ‘Now you need to exercise,’” remembers Hall. He started riding a bike three miles a day, and used the exercise band provided by CHANGE to do exercise at home while watching television. He started losing weight again.
Hall hasn’t stopped smoking, but he has cut back from 1-2 packs a day to 1 pack a month. He can feel the difference in his stamina and ability to exercise without losing his breath, and he’s back to hunting.
“I can feel my wind coming back and I can exercise, and I feel a whole lot better,” he said.
He advises anyone interested in improving their heart health to sign up for CHANGE.
“I would tell people to come down and sign up, if they want to do something to change their life, this would be the place.”
Grady Hall lives in Cofield, NC.
A PDF file of this success story can be found here.