My Senior Project on Emphysema

[meggie126]

I am doing my senior project on emphysema. My Teacher wants us to interview a person with emphysema. Would anybody be willing to answer my questions?

1. What is your name?
2. How old are you?
3. What is your occupation?

   1.  Why did you decide to quit?
   2. When did you quit?
   3. How did you quit?
   4. How did you feel after 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, and 1 year later?
   5. How many times have you tried to quit?
   6. How old were you when you found out you had emphysema?
   7. How are they treating you with this?
   8. How are you living with this?
   9. Do you wish you never started smoking?
  10.How long have you smoked for?
  11. What does your family feel about this?
  12.How does smoking make you feel now?

[Isobella]

I will ditto medicmommy-will a post-mortem interview be ok?  Might be common with your subject, sorry to say.

1.  Ann Marie
2.  64
3.  Mother, homemaker

1.  I didn't decide to quit, my lungs decided for me
2.  When I was accepted into a transplant program
3. Cold turkey
4.  I didn't feel better, by then the damage was done.  There would be no improvement.
5.  About 15 years ago, right before my lung volume reduction surgery.
6.  49
7.  Oxygen, inhalers all kinds of meds.  The lung volume reduction bought me several years before I had to go on oxygen full time.
8.  I stay home most of the time.  It feels like I am trying to breathe thru a straw.  Not a big one either, one of those little cocktail ones.
9. Yes
10.  Around 50 yrs
11.  It is hard for my family.  Especially now, because we all live in Florida and I am in Alabama at UAB awaiting my transplant.  I need 24 hour help/care so my 3 daughters and my husband take weeklong shifts flying out and caring for me.  They love me very much.
12.  Smoking is a terrible waste in so many ways.  It robbed me of my life.  It robbed my family of a mother.  And my grandchildren of their grandmother.

She got her transplant on my 40th birthday-it was my week to be with her.
She died on my daughters 13th birthday.  I was with her then as well.

Meggie126, good luck with your project.  Even tho I am not the victim of that disease, you made me see it through my mothers eyes and I thank you for that. :-)

[medicmommy]

Would a post mortem interview by proxy be okay? (interview answered through another person who knew the patient)...
1.Mamie Poindexter
2.73 years young
3.Homemaker...I was born in Oklahoma and had 12 babies to take care of
1. I was hooked since I was 13 years old...I tried lots of times but couldn't quit
2.Smoked to the day I died
3. I tried many times...I couldn't stay off of them for long
4.I was a witch...No body could stand to be around me when i tried to quit...
5.More than I can remember
6.48 years old
7.I had lung cancer...they have removed a part of my lung...I'm on oxygen and breathing treatments and pills all the time
8.Day to day...I use oxygen and breathing medicine all the time...If I don't, I'll stop breathing...
9.Yes...a million times over...It was the stupidest thing I've ever done...
10.50 years
11. They get mad at me because they see me dying of lung failure, and I don't quit...
12. Why quit now? The damage is done...
Mamie died just before her 74th birthday...The emphysema had caused her heart to enlarge and fail too...One night she was "just too tired to fight" anymore, and unknown to the rest of the family, she took off her oxygen after taking her pain pills, and went to sleep...She was found dead in the morning...