Geri M.: A Mail Carrier Who Ran Out of Breath at 44

Geri was 44 when her doctor told her she had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) — a group of diseases, including emphysema and chronic bronchitis, that block airflow and make breathing steadily harder, and can kill. She was a mail carrier in Michigan, on her feet all day carrying heavy packages up and down stairs. She had smoked since about age 20, roughly a pack of menthol cigarettes a day. Most cases of COPD are caused by smoking or secondhand smoke.

Her story is one of CDC's Tips From Former Smokers campaign. She is now 58.

Thirty-five years of menthols

Cigarettes were in the background of Geri's childhood: her mother, her grandfather and most of her relatives smoked. When her boyfriend at the time smoked, she started too, and did not think it was a big deal. She smoked with her morning coffee, on breaks during the workday and out at clubs with friends — about a pack a day, for 35 years.

She was active, too — gardening, cooking, dancing — which is why she noticed when she started having trouble catching her breath, and went for a check-up. Her doctor prescribed an inhaler and told her to stop smoking.

She tried. The nicotine patch and gum, prescription quit-smoking medication, even hypnosis — but she was addicted to nicotine and found quitting very hard. Looking back, she says she did not take it as seriously as she should have: she wanted a pill, or whatever else it took, so she could get on with her life.

The morning she could not breathe

As the disease advanced, Geri could not take more than a few steps without getting winded. Then one morning in 2014 she woke up unable to breathe — no air would go in, and none would come out. Her chest was tight, and she thought she was having a heart attack. It was a COPD flare-up; paramedics put a ventilator mask over her nose and mouth to force air through her tightened airways.

After that, her doctor told her to stop working. At 54, she gave up the job she loved. She quit smoking soon after, in 2015.

Living with stage 4 COPD

At first, taking a shower or making the bed exhausted her. Even rolling over in bed at night to get comfortable left her out of breath, and in those early days the disease wore her down and made her angry.

Supplemental oxygen and pulmonary rehabilitation gave some of her strength back: when she started rehab she could barely walk two minutes on a treadmill, and she worked up to half an hour. Her lungs have kept getting worse. She now has late-stage (stage 4) COPD, is on oxygen 24 hours a day, and hopes to be accepted for a lung transplant before it is too late.

Her life is arranged around the disease:

• Thanksgiving is still her feast, but she starts cooking weeks, even a month, ahead so the meal is ready on time, and rests when she tires.
• Outings with her grandchildren go to places with an electrical outlet for her oxygen machine, not the zoo.
• Leaving the house starts with checking that her oxygen tanks are full; she uses a walker to get the mail.
• Family takes out her trash and drives her to appointments — and she talks to her adult children every day, because she does not know how much time she has left.

If her story helps even one person quit, she says, she will have turned her curse into a blessing.

Free help to quit

Sources

Based on "Geri M.'s Story," Tips From Former Smokers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the campaign's videos with Geri; a work of the United States government in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words.