2008-08-08 American Lung Assoc

"If you can't breathe, nothing else matters." This is why I support the work the American Lung Association is doing to fight lung disease through research, education, and advocacy.

When my son Jonathan was just twenty months old, I called our pediatrician's office because he was breathing shallow raspy breaths sixty times a minute. I had never known anyone with asthma and didn't know that he was wheezing. We wound up visiting the doctor's office and Urgent Care many times over the course of that winter and spring. We lived only a few minutes from the clinic but each time felt like a very long drive with my young son in the carseat behind me struggling to breathe.

Finally, after seven months, he was diagnosed with asthma and a home health worker brought a nebulizer to our house and showed us how to use it. A nebulizer is a machine that vaporizes liquid medication so that it can be inhaled. Little did I know then that this machine would be an integral part of Jonathan's life forevermore.

Once we had the machine at home, it was a great relief to be able to treat asthma episodes without rushing to the doctor's office and we were able to continue treatment for several days as needed. We soon had an arsenal of medications at home and still do today.

For a while Jonathan took preventative medication four times a day via fifteen minute nebulizer treatments. If he was having any asthma symptoms, we added nebulizer treatments with Albuterol every four hours as well, so we frequently spent two hours a day using the machine. This was not an easy time. He was little and could not sit by himself for the treatments. We watched a lot of TV while he sat in my lap and I held the mask over his nose and mouth. We hoped in vain that he would "outgrow" the asthma as we'd heard is possible.

Now he is thirteen and his current regimen includes two preventative medicines - a Singulair pill at bedtime and an inhalation of Advair each morning and evening. If he has any asthma troubles he uses his Albuterol inhaler, and when he has more serious problems he takes Xopenex or Albuterol via his nebulizer. When that's not enough, we see the doctor. Jonathan has needed a course of steroids to wipe out an asthma attack approximately thirty times in his life. Prednisone has been his life-saving medication, but used only when absolutely necessary.

We have been fortunate to avoid both the hospital emergency room and any hospital stays for his moderate asthma. Jonathan brings his inhaler with him almost everywhere he goes and we always bring the nebulizer with us when we go away for more than a day. I can't begin to guess how much medicine he has taken in his lifetime and I know the price tag in dollars for that medication has been very high both for us and for our medical insurance providers. I am tremendously grateful that my son lives in a time and place where such treatments exist and are available to him, giving him the opportunity to live a normal, healthy life.

Asthma is the number one chronic disease in children under eighteen, affecting 6.8 million children in the U.S. in 2006. More than 17 million adults have asthma, while 12-24 million adults have COPD or some evidence of impaired lung function. The number of people with asthma continues to increase and asthma is responsible for hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and 4,000 deaths each year. The economic cost of this disease is estimated at $16 billion per year due to both medical costs and causing 14.5 million missed days of work and 12.8 million missed days of school each year.

Lung disease continues to be a lethal killer in the U.S. It is responsible for one six deaths and this death rate has been continuously increasing. It's likely that you or someone you know is struggling with or has had a lung disease. The CDC reports that more than 35 million Americans are living with chronic lung diseases. The most common lung diseases are asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis).

The American Lung Association is doing many things to fight these diseases and there are many opportunities for you to help by volunteering or raising money toward funding their efforts.

Last fall Jonathan and I walked in the Blow the Whistle on Asthma walk. My family will walk in this year's American Lung Association Lung Walk with the Tellabs Red Team in Oak Brook on September 21. You may find more information about the Lung Walk and the work supported by it at www.lungil.org. You can help by participating in the walk and/or making a donation to a team that will be walking.

We walk in honor of my son. We walk in memory of my grandmother, Eva C. Hayton, who loved children and died of emphysema in 1989, a year before my oldest child was born. We walk in memory of my father-in-law, Gabe Tatar, who died of lung cancer in 1996, more than three years before the birth of my youngest daughter.

Please consider supporting the worthy endeavors of the American Lung Association by your gift of time or money. We can make a difference.