From Gail:

In the summer of 2009, I was diagnosed with COPD and a mild case of fibrosis (scarring) as a result of a bad case of pneumonia that I had a few years earlier.  I stayed pretty stable until the winter of 2010/11 when my breathing became more labored than usual.  After finally convincing the pulmonologist that there was something else wrong, it was discovered in August 2011 that as a result of the damaged lung tissue, I had also developed pulmonary hypertension.  However, also because of the damaged lung tissue, efforts to treat the hypertension did not work and in the meantime, the fibrosis disease continued to progress.  By the time I saw the lung disease specialist in SLC in January 2012, , it was determined that I was in end stages of the disease and the only course of action was a double lung transplant.