On July 13, 2005, Mike Shore was given three years to live.
Ten years later on Aug. 8, 2015, Shore along with his family, friends, and members of his church had a Celebration of Life party to commemorate a decade passing since he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and given this grim prognosis.
Pulmonary fibrosis is a relatively unknown condition in which the lungs are scarred, making breathing difficult. The average life expectancy of someone diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis without a lung transplant is three to four years.
Shore underwent a double lung transplant five years ago.
His story was featured by Evansville Living in “Breathing Treatments” in the July/August 2013 issue.
“I feel good,” says Shore, who lives around Darmstadt, Indiana. “During my last lung test, my pulmonary function was a little down. I’m not rejecting my new lung, but I am in a pre-rejecting state.”
The less than satisfactory report brought him and his family back to reality, says Shore. It had been so long since he had received a bad report that he put his pulmonary fibrosis on the back burner.
“It’s hard to complain about how I am now because of the time I have been given,” he says.
Shore goes to the gym three times a week, teaches every Saturday evening at his church, spends as much time as he can with his wife Christa and their three grandchildren, and is a member of the Pulmonary Fibrosis Partners, an organization formed in 2009 in Newburgh, Indiana, to meet the needs of patients and their families. The group currently is preparing events for Pulmonary Fibrosis Month this September.
“Mike gets to teach people of our church how to live life through hard circumstances, just like he has, and that has been a blessing,” says Christa, who also is a member of the Pulmonary Fibrosis Partners.
“The (Pulmonary Fibrosis) Partners have helped fuel a lot of research,” she says. “There is still no cure for pulmonary fibrosis, but we’re seeing so many people have longer, better quality lives because of this research and lung transplants.”
For more information about the Pulmonary Fibrosis Partners, visit pulmonaryfibrosispartners.org.
