Barb McKean

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.

Barb is a daughter, sister (to nine brothers and sisters!), wife, and mother of three who has been fighting Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, or IPF (more info on the disease is below), for over five years. This is amazing, and a testament to Barb's fighting spirit, because most people diagnosed with IPF are given two to five years to live.

Since her diagnosis Barb has continued to be as active as possible and take full advantage of the time she has. Even after being placed on oxygen full-time in 2019, she continued to take walks with Stella, the family dog, and get out of the house as much as possible. This disease has steadily taken it's toll however and everything has become progressively harder for Barb.

Barb is currently on the lung transplant list for a bilateral transplant. She has a great team of doctors at the University of Minnesota and has joined a large community of IPF sufferers and survivors that give us a lot of hope for the future. Any moment Barb could receive the call to go get her new lungs; which is certainly scary but a call that we are all very much looking forward to.

Please subscribe for updates from the family her and you are encouraged to share your stories and thoughts here as well. You're likely her because you know Barb in some way, and chances are very good you have some "Barb story" to tell.

What is idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis?Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive disease (gets worse over time) isolated to the lung. It is a type of interstitial lung disease, which is a group of 200 diseases with similar symptoms but different causes. Currently, more than 80,000 adults in the United States have IPF, and more than 30,000 new cases are diagnosed each year.

In IPF, lung tissue becomes scarred and changes the lung's ability to function normally. The scarring typically starts at the edges of the lungs and advances towards the center of the lungs. Typically, mild scarring occurs first, but over months to years, the normal lung tissue is replaced by more heavily scarred lung tissue, which makes it difficult to breathe and deliver needed oxygen to the body. Unfortunately, IPF is a disabling disease without a known cure and with few treatment options.