The Your Life Matters Show Podcast - IPF - Quality Time Remaining - Patients and Caretakers Speak

THIS EPISODE BROADCASTED LIVE SEPTEMBER 1, 2022

Tonight, I will be doing a show unlike any other you have or will see on this podcast. Tonight, we are going to delve deeply into IPF. IPF stands for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.

According to WebMD the definition of IPF is a serious lung disease. As you know when you breathe in, oxygen moves through tiny air sacs in your lungs and into your bloodstream. From there, the oxygen travels to your organs. IPF causes scar tissue to grow inside your lungs and makes it hard to breathe. And it only gets worse over time.

The scar tissue is thick, like the scars you get on your skin after a cut. It slows oxygen flow from your lungs to your blood which can keep your body from working as it should.

Know that right now there is no cure for IPF. For most, the symptoms do not get better, but treatment can slow down the damage to your lungs. Some people will get worse quickly while others can live 10 years or more after diagnosis. There are treatments to help you breathe easier and manage your symptoms. You may even be able to have a lung transplant.

That is the medical side. That is also as far as we are going to delve medically on the show tonight. Tonight, I want to focus on the personal side of IPF. Listen to what the patients and caretakers have to say. How they deal with the disease day in and day out. How hard it is for our loved ones to watch the disease get worse and eventually take our lives.

This show is especially important to me, your host. See I also have IPF. I was diagnosed a little over a year ago and am battling both the mental and physical side of the disease. My wife Jenn will also be joining us tonight. As a caretaker, she has had to take on a lot of responsibilities…some new ones and some chores I used to do which I cannot anymore. We will speak with other patients who have the disease, and hopefully this guest will be able to join us, it’s a man who has just had a lung transplant.

The show might be a little sad but we all, caretakers and patients want everyone, our loved ones, our friends to understand what we have, what we are up against and most importantly how we feel, and hope others will treat us.

Note that at no time will we be recommending any medical advice of any sort.

I cannot stress enough, if you have IPF or your loved one does, talk to your Pulmonologist about your condition and heed their medical advice. No one on this show is a doctor and again is offering any medical advice.