Jump to full article: West Central Tribune (MN), 2008-08-02
Author: Ron Cole
Intro: Since January of this year, I have spent more than a month in the hospital, and many of those days in intensive care, because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema.
I smoked for over 50 years and was told in the late 1990s that I would be on oxygen in a couple of years.
Well, I didn’t listen, but in 2004 my doctor put me on oxygen, even though I had quit smoking in 2003. . . .
I invite any one of you to call me or come visit me so I can explain what it is like to not be able to breathe, until you have been near death a couple of times in a six-month period.
Or ask my family what it was like to see me suffer with a breathing tube down my throat. It is not a very pleasant picture.
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