- Ted Koppel and his wife, Grace Anne Dorney Koppel, opened their eleventh pulmonary rehabilitation clinic to help people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
- Grace Anne was diagnosed with COPD in 2001 and told she only had a few years to live
- Their clinics are focused on underserved areas where COPD rates are skyrocketing — and as Grace Anne says, more needs to be done because COPD is the leading cause of death in the US
Cult journalist Ted Koppel and his wife, Grace Anne Dorney Koppel, have opened their eleventh pulmonary rehabilitation clinic — part of their ongoing mission through the Dorney-Koppel Foundation to help underserved communities with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) cases. high.
And for Koppel, the fight against COPD is personal; In 2001, Grace Anne was diagnosed with a progressive lung disorder.
But before she got the grim diagnosis, Ted tells PEOPLE that her doctor told her to “lose ten pounds and you’ll feel like a new woman. Well, it was a little more complicated than that.”
It’s an indication of how misunderstood COPD is—even though it’s one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
Ted Koppel toasts wife Grace Anne Dorney Koppel in 2005.
Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP Photo
The US Centers for Disease Control says 16 million people have a chronic lung disorder – and “many more don’t know they have it.”
When Grace Anne was finally diagnosed with COPD, she says she was told, “You have to start preparing for the end of your life. You have 3 to 5 years left to live.”
“I got this terrible diagnosis, but at the same time I got a great gift,” she tells PEOPLE. “I got a prescription for pulmonary rehab.”
As he explains, pulmonary rehabilitation is an individualized program.
“Its main component is exercise,” she says, “but it also includes nutrition, how to take medications properly, how to recognize a lung attack and how to respond.”
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Stock image of an inhaler.
Getty
And as Ted points out, “Even something as seemingly simple as an inhaler needs to be demonstrated. One of our pulmonologists told us about a patient who had an inhaler and claimed it didn’t do anything— [because] she sprayed him in the armpit.”
Their first clinic was actually a birthday present to Grace Anne from Ted, who jokes, “It was a birthday with zero—and zero wasn’t the first number.”
And now, access to pulmonary rehabilitative care is “an incredible gift for people who are really given very little hope,” he tells PEOPLE. Since opening that first clinic in rural Maryland, they’ve opened 10 others, including the first pulmonary rehab in Washington, DC
As Grace Anne explains, “there has been almost no progress in drug development for COPD. We are working to find a cure, but it is certainly not in sight.”
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Grace Anne Dorney Koppel and Ted Koppel in 2007.
Tina Fineberg/AP Photo
Doctors say the 17-year-old boy’s lungs are completely blocking vaping
As Ted tells PEOPLE, Grace Anne “called COPD the Rodney Dangerfield of the disease. It gets no respect – for many reasons, smoking included. And one of the things that people don’t understand is that smoking is not the only cause of COPD.”
Eight of their clinics are located in West Virginia, where the CDC estimates nearly 12% of the population has been diagnosed with the disease. As Grace Anne says, “Smoking rates have fallen in this country, yet rural women are still being diagnosed with COPD where there are many environmental hazards.”
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Pulmonary rehabilitation, Ted explains, “gives people their independence and dignity. It could be: ‘I can go to the mailbox again and get the mail. I couldn’t do it. I would rather run out of breath.’ It can be very humble, but it changes lives.”
He continues, “I don’t know what could be a better advertising slogan for pulmonary rehabilitation than to point to someone who has 3 to 5 years left to live – and who is still very much alive 23 years later.”
For more information, visit copdsos.org or copdfoundation.org
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education