At that point, she fully realized the role smoking had in her life. "I wasn't letting that little white thing control me, and yet my life revolved around it. It determined where I would go out to dinner, how I plotted out daily activities. If I was bored or anything went wrong, there it was. And if I had a choice between smoking and eating, well it was not a choice."

And now surgery was the only choice — the removal of the upper quadrant of her right lung and sections of two ribs where the cancer had metastasized.

"It was the most pain I've ever been in in my life," she said. She was back on her feet in a few weeks and back at work two months later. The usual craving for a cigarette was left behind, too. The cancer wasn't, though, and it showed up again in a lymph node a year and a half later, inoperable because it was located too close to her aorta (a very large artery exiting the heart) to risk a possible nick getting the affected node out with surgery.

Radiation and chemotherapy were prescribed from September to December in 2004. James had all the usual side effects — lost hair, diminishing weight and abiding nausea. She was off work a year, but is back at Brighton Bank in downtown Salt Lake City.

"Work has been so great and supportive," she said. "I'll never be able to thank them enough for keeping a place for me at work and in their hearts."

She said that throughout the grueling treatment regimen she never once thought the cure was worse than the disease. "I kept thinking, 'I brought this on myself, and I have to do everything I can to get better."'

She also couldn't stop thinking about the ripple effect on her family, she said. "I had always refused to talk about it or would dismiss their feelings by saying that whatever harm I might be doing, it wasn't affecting them. It's amazing the ways we kid ourselves. Now all I can think, and what hurts more than any pain I went through — and it was bad — is the hurt I put my kids through. That's the part I really hate."

Although she was willing to go public with her story and be featured in an anti-smoking television campaign, James said she would never give advice to people who want to quit. But she will tell them to avoid nicotine patches while sleeping because they gave her nightmares. She won't tell people to quit, in part, because she doubts she would have been able to quit without the surgery.

"I'll never know," she said. "But deep down, I'm pretty sure the cancer made me quit, and if I hadn't found out I had it, I'd still be smoking. So I look at it — like the kids say — It's all good."

She admits that she's never been able to get "to that calm, relaxed" state of mind that smoking induced, even after doing pilates.

"But I don't miss it, and I don't really know if I could have quit before I had to," she said, noting that's probably why she'll never be one of those overzealous, advice-spouting former smokers.

"If someone asks me about smoking, I do say that smoking is a bad habit, but smokers aren't bad people," she said. "And if someone asks about quitting, I willl tell them it can be done, but no one else can quit for them. Support is very important, and use meds if you need them, but you'll be the one who quits or not. Smoking at first is a very social, party thing, but you'll quit it all by yourself."

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E-mail: jthalman@desnews.com