Bronchial Thermoplasty Video Transcript

“Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.”  Christopher Reeve

Betty, Pulmonary Patient Educator:  Imagine every day when you get up, trying to figure and plan your day around being able to breathe.

Donna:  I couldn’t play with my grandchildren – I couldn’t do any of those things.  I couldn’t build a snowman…my sister always built the snowman, and I told her how. 

Betty:  She felt like no one paid any attention to her asthma.  A lot of folks thought that she wasn’t as bad as she was.

Donna:  I remember my mom telling me, “Don’t get upset, Donna.  Asthma doesn’t kill you….it just makes you uncomfortable.”

Every year, asthma is responsible for 3,447 deaths in the U.S. – National Hospital Statistics Report, January 2012.

That’s more than 9 people every single day.

Rajesh Patel, M.D. Pulmonologist:  I first saw Donna about probably 18 months ago.  She was seeing a pulmonologist earlier who had been treating her for asthma all this while.  And she just wanted another opinion when she came to see me.

Donna:  The last time I was in the hospital, they came and said they had a procedure that was new, and they felt that I would benefit from it.

Rajesh Patel, M.D.:  That is the time I introduced to her the subject of bronchial thermoplasty as a treatment option which people on seeing Donna was not available to most asthmatics.

Good Samaritan is the first and only hospital in the Dayton area to perform the bronchial thermoplasty procedure. 

Donna was the first recipient of this procedure in Dayton.

Rajesh Patel, M.D.:  When we do bronchial thermoplasty, it’s done over a period of six to eight weeks.  Each time we are dealing with one lobe, the right lower lobe, then the left lower lobe…and then sometimes we do both the upper lobes together or separately.

Donna:  And he said he would go down into my lungs, and he would take a thing just like he was doing a bronchial scope, but it would have a radio wave on it…and it would, as he put it, ‘beat up my lungs.’

Rajesh Patel, M.D.:  I described the procedure to her, and Donna was so symptomatic from the current treatment regimen that she jumped at it, and she said, “no, I want to try it and see if it will help me.”

Donna:  I trusted God.  If he could fix me, he would.  If he couldn’t, he would figure out why he didn’t, and then my son could have it later.  So I was ready.

All of Donna’s children suffer with asthma.   Her son is a severe asthmatic.

Donna:  After the first procedure, it actually felt like, I mean they wouldn’t let me, but I felt like I could get up and go.

Rajesh Patel, MD:  She felt immediately much better to an extent that she had come off of prednisone and she was weaning down on her inhalers.

Donna:  I used two inhalers this year…and I used to use two a month.  And 90% of that was just because I think I was getting a little afraid, so I would just give it a little puff.

Rajesh Patel, MD:  When the results came out well, it felt like I had done something unusual, when most physicians do the, strive to do the same things.

Betty:  This just makes my day…I’ll just say those words…because it will help so many people with their quality of life.  Maybe it will put me out of a job. 

Donna:  There isn’t anything I can’t do.  Run up and down the stairs…do that for exercise…30-40 stairs at a time.

Rajesh Patel, MD:   When you have this kind of result, there is no question, you feel so much better inside about helping patients, about the ability to make a difference in somebody’s life.

Donna:  My sister called me on my birthday and wished me happy birthday.  Congratulated me because I was almost one year out of hospital for the first time in 15 years.  And she says, “And you know what this day is?”  I said, “No, what?”  She said, “It’s the first time in your life that I didn’t have your birthday…and think ‘is she gonna die this year’?”   But I didn’t!  And I’m not gonna die next year, either.

To everyone who gives the gift of hope.  Thank you.

Go back to Donna’s Story.