How Doc Enright Learned About Asthma
I'm very happy for the opportunity to help folks with allergies, asthma, and other lung diseases on the WebMD Asthma message boards since February 2000. Over 10,000 messages have been written on the board and only a fraction were written by me since I've encouraged those with years of personal experience with asthma and asthma medications to respond to those newly diagnosed. So what makes me tick?
Judging from my baby photos and my mother's recollections, I've always been a curious guy, and according to my wife, I may have more than a touch of attention deficit. In college, I wanted to be an electronics engineer, but switched to pre-med just before my senior year, after working with a mainframe computer used for medical research at the local hospital (now Loma Linda University Medical Center). I had long hair, listened to loud rock and roll whenever possible, went to church every weekend, and scored highest in psychiatry during my last year of medical school, but applied for internal medicine residencies because my mom wanted me to be "a real doctor."
I became very interested in asthma after two patients were admitted to our team from the emergency room during a six week rotation in 1976 and both died in the middle of the night while desperately sucking on nebulized bronchodilators. In retrospect, it was probably because their primary care physicians wouldn't let us administer corticosteroids, thinking that the patients would "get hooked on them." Wow, that was 30 years ago and more than 5000 people still die each year in the United States from severe asthma attacks. We now have much more effective and safer asthma medications, but they are not always available or used by those who need them.
I started to read about asthma and learned that its severity could be measured by spirometry. I then found an old Vitalor spirometer in a closet at Queens Hospital in Honolulu, ordered some paper and mouthpieces for it and learned how to use it. Over time, I made contact with an allergist who got me an interview for a fellowship at National Jewish Hospital (NJH).
I was offered the fellowship two weeks later, as long as I started in 4 weeks. My wife didn't want to leave the Hawaiian beaches, but I told her the sky was always blue in the Rocky Mountains (true, but not in Denver in the winter).
NJH deservedly had the reputation as the best asthma center in the country and also had the best atypical TB experts. The steroid-dependent asthmatics would move to NJH for weeks to months to learn about asthma and get on the best available asthma medications, and taper their steroids. During the first year in Denver, I learned asthma research in a basement pulmonary function lab.
Over the next year, my mentors at NJH convinced me to apply for a pulmonary fellowship which my wife strongly opposed because she wanted me to finally get a "real job" that made lots of money.
With a week to consider my options, I tapped our home phone line (I'm an electronic hobbyist, too) and discovered a more traditional reason for a divorce, so I accepted the fellowship and moved on.
Stay tuned to discover how I got "religion" -- asthma religion, that is!
Judging from my baby photos and my mother's recollections, I've always been a curious guy, and according to my wife, I may have more than a touch of attention deficit. In college, I wanted to be an electronics engineer, but switched to pre-med just before my senior year, after working with a mainframe computer used for medical research at the local hospital (now Loma Linda University Medical Center). I had long hair, listened to loud rock and roll whenever possible, went to church every weekend, and scored highest in psychiatry during my last year of medical school, but applied for internal medicine residencies because my mom wanted me to be "a real doctor."
I became very interested in asthma after two patients were admitted to our team from the emergency room during a six week rotation in 1976 and both died in the middle of the night while desperately sucking on nebulized bronchodilators. In retrospect, it was probably because their primary care physicians wouldn't let us administer corticosteroids, thinking that the patients would "get hooked on them." Wow, that was 30 years ago and more than 5000 people still die each year in the United States from severe asthma attacks. We now have much more effective and safer asthma medications, but they are not always available or used by those who need them.
I started to read about asthma and learned that its severity could be measured by spirometry. I then found an old Vitalor spirometer in a closet at Queens Hospital in Honolulu, ordered some paper and mouthpieces for it and learned how to use it. Over time, I made contact with an allergist who got me an interview for a fellowship at National Jewish Hospital (NJH).
I was offered the fellowship two weeks later, as long as I started in 4 weeks. My wife didn't want to leave the Hawaiian beaches, but I told her the sky was always blue in the Rocky Mountains (true, but not in Denver in the winter).
NJH deservedly had the reputation as the best asthma center in the country and also had the best atypical TB experts. The steroid-dependent asthmatics would move to NJH for weeks to months to learn about asthma and get on the best available asthma medications, and taper their steroids. During the first year in Denver, I learned asthma research in a basement pulmonary function lab.
Over the next year, my mentors at NJH convinced me to apply for a pulmonary fellowship which my wife strongly opposed because she wanted me to finally get a "real job" that made lots of money.
With a week to consider my options, I tapped our home phone line (I'm an electronic hobbyist, too) and discovered a more traditional reason for a divorce, so I accepted the fellowship and moved on.
Stay tuned to discover how I got "religion" -- asthma religion, that is!
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