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.
In December of 2018 our mother, Sheree Dodd, was diagnosed with an Interstitial Lung Disease called Pulmonary Fibrosis. In an attempt to keep all of our friends and family updated we have chosen to create this page. It is just something informal but a means to provide updates about her journey and battle against Pulmonary Fibrosis. As a family, we are still trying to process all of the information provided and the next steps to come. We apologize for any delays or unanswered responses.
So what is Pulmonary Fibrosis? I am going to copy/paste a good description from a link that i found to be helpful in understanding and explaining this disease/illness. The link is
https://www.pulmonaryfibrosis.org/life-with-pf/about-pf. Here is the description they use...”The word “pulmonary” means lung and the word “fibrosis” means scar tissue— similar to scars that you may have on your skin from an old injury or surgery. So, in its simplest sense, pulmonary fibrosis (PF) means scarring in the lungs. Over time, the scar tissue can destroy the normal lung and make it hard for oxygen to get into your blood. Low oxygen levels (and the stiff scar tissue itself) can cause you to feel short of breath, particularly when walking and exercising. Pulmonary fibrosis isn’t just one disease. It is a family of more than 200 different lung diseases that all look very much alike. The PF family of lung diseases falls into an even larger group of diseases called the interstitial lung diseases (also known as ILD), which includes all of the diseases that have inflammation and/or scarring in the lung. Some interstitial lung diseases don’t include scar tissue. When an interstitial lung disease does include scar tissue in the lung, we call it pulmonary fibrosis”(
https://www.pulmonaryfibrosis.org/life-with-pf/about-pf). Many different things can cause PF and the doctors believe that her’s was caused by an underlying an autoimmune disease called Sjogrens, that she was not aware of, nor diagnosed with until recently
After the initial shock, confusion, and devastation of the Pulmonary Fibrosis diagnosis we will hopefully have more answers soon. Sheree has had an amazing team of doctors here in Chattanooga. Dr Lydia Speer (PCP), Dr Richard Morrison (Cardiothroacic Surgeon), Dr John Boldt (Pulmonogist), Dr Jayne Crowe (Rheumatologist). They have all been amazing and aggressive in treatment, testing, and referrals. We will forever be grateful of the exceptional care. The biggest and most unfortunate struggle at this point is health insurance keeping her from the majority of things.
Sheree is stable at this point. She has been placed on continuous oxygen and a cpap machine when sleeping. We have started the journey at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio this month for an evaluation by the Lung Transplant Coordination Team. This is to see if she eligible to be placed on the lung transplant waiting list with UNOS. She continues to see her regular physicians here in Chattanooga as scheduled. Again, we will hopefully have more answers and updates soon.
Brooke
