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Task 6 Recognizing Details
Watch a video clip “Struggling to Breathe with Pulmonary Fibrosis” twice and decide whether each of the statements below is TRUE (T) or FALSE (F).
| _T_
_ F _T_ _F _T_ _F_ _T_ | 1. Pulmonary fibrosis is a disease whose cause is little known. 2. Bob O’Rourke doesn’t consider pulmonary fibrosis a death sentence to him. 3. Pulmonary fibrosis ultimately robs its victims of the ability to breathe. 4. Pulmonary fibrosis is a respiratory disease affecting mainly those aged 50 and younger. 5. Pulmonary fibrosis has been on the rise over the past years. 6. Pulmonary fibrosis becomes suddenly debilitating to the lung tissues. 7. Patients with pulmonary fibrosis can take steroids to slow the disease, but there is no cure. |
Textbook:
Struggling to Breathe with Pulmonary fibrosis
It's a disease that strikes people who are otherwise perfectly healthy and slowly robs them of their ability to actually breathe. Tens of thousands die from it from it every year, but very little is known about pulmonary fibrosis.
"When you get diagnosed with this, that's a death sentence," said Bob, a patient with pulmonary fibrosis.
71-year-old Bob O'Rourke is fighting for his life. "Living on oxygen is not my way of living." said Bob.
Every breath is a breath to survive. Four years ago, O'Rourke was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that scars and deteriorates the lungs, ultimately robbing its victims the ability to breathe.
"So the lungs get very hard and they don't expand. It's almost like someone describing breathing through a straw." explained O'Rourke.
Although anyone can get pulmonary fibrosis, it mainly affects those 50 and older. O'Rourke has been on oxygen for the last 3 months.
According to pulmonary specialist Dr. Joseph Lynch, over the past 8 years, pulmonary fibrosis has been on the rise as more symptoms are being discovered.
"Basically it's in people who are perfectly healthy, who out of the blue develop shortness of breath." explauned Dr. Joseph Lynch, Assoc. Chief, UCLA Division of Pulmonary & Critical Care.
Dr. Lynch says the disease becomes progressively debilitating. You can see that through O'Rourke's CT scans.
"Over here you can see these areas, these little holes and those holes are scar tissues and all these lines here, its scar tissue as compared to normal ones." said Bob.
Bob has been taking steroids to slow the disease but the ony way to survive now is with a lung transplant.
Little is known about pulmonary fibrosis - what causes it, who can get it, and its deadly progression. But what is known is that this fatal disease takes 40 thousand lives per year, the same number as breast cancer. Currently there is no cure.
