A video of a New Minas, N.S. man, lying in a hospital bed during his final days alive is quickly spreading online, and his family hopes that his message will convince others to quit smoking.
“This is my last will and testament. Either tonight, or tomorrow, I’ll be dead,” says John Wiseman in the video.
“I hope that anybody sees this, will remember what it’s like and will not start smoking,”
He wanted his final days filmed for a reason- so he could share his last wish with people and hopefully spare another family heartbreak.
“I actually couldn’t stay in the room when it was being filmed. His son and my daughter did it,” says Sandra Wiseman-Burrell, John Wiseman’s sister.
John Wiseman died on May 6, after a two week stay in hospital. He was 65-years-old. His family says he died following complications caused by years of smoking.
Sandra says her brother started smoking at a young age, and suffered from emphysema for some time.
“In his last few days, he discovered that he had an ulcer in his stomach that was bleeding,” explains Sandra. “They tried to do a couple surgeries on it, but the doctor had told us that his bowels, his small bowel was like mush, and they couldn’t even sew into it anymore. So they couldn’t do any more surgeries, plus his heart and his lungs were failing, they couldn’t do anything more,”
Sandra says her brother wanted to make the video to try and help others, and hopefully spare another family the heartbreak that his went through in his final days.
“His message was ‘please, don’t smoke, you’ll end up like me’,” says Sandra. “If it just touched one person’s life, he would be happy that somebody stopped smoking, or didn’t start smoking.”
Shortly after posting the video, Sandra started to get responses from people across the country.
“I was really surprised at how quickly it’s moving out there and people are sharing it. An hour or two after I put it on, there were over 365 people who had seen it already.”
The video, which was posted to Facebook on Thursday, has now been seen by over 1000 people.
The family’s hope is that people consider John’s message.
“Do whatever you have to do, but just quit smoking. Because your family doesn’t want to see you, like I saw my brother,” says Sandra Wiseman-Burrell.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Natasha Pace.