Bobby Brown is 88 years old, lives with a lung disease that only gets worse, and not long ago couldn’t make it from his car to his own bed without a friend carrying him inside. Now he’s back on the golf course, step by step having rebuilt the strength to do what he loves most.
Brown has pulmonary fibrosis, a diagnosis that comes with a blunt reality he states plainly: “Pulmonary fibrosis is a disease; it doesn’t get better, it only gets worse,” he said, according to CBS News Texas. The North Texas retiree had also undergone neck surgery unrelated to his lung condition, and the combined toll left him unable to leave his bed and dependent on oxygen tanks just to breathe.
The low point came after that surgery, when Brown found he couldn’t even walk from his car into his own house. A friend had to step in and physically carry him to bed, he recalled. It’s the kind of moment that would make anyone wonder if an active life was still possible.
Relearning How to Breathe
Brown’s path back started with respiratory therapists Ty Whitting and Danna Carter at Texas Health Arlington Memorial, who worked with him to rebuild his breathing capacity. Whitting said the work respiratory therapists do is about helping people regain the breath they’ve lost. Brown paired that therapy with breathing techniques and cardio exercise aimed at rebuilding his strength from the ground up…