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Before Denise Eaton May was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, she had no idea that as an African American woman, she was at greater risk for the lung disease. Now she volunteers with the American Lung Association of California to raise awareness about sarcoidosis and other lung diseases. “I never thought I could be someone who gets lung disease,” Eaton May says. “I was living a healthy life and then bam.” It was November 2005 and Eaton May couldn’t breathe. Her husband called an ambulance and for the next six days, she was hospitalized, fighting for her life as doctors tried to figure out what was happening to her. Finally she was diagnosed with sarcoidosis.
Sarcoidosis results from inflammation of the body’s tissues and can occur in almost any organ, but it starts most often in the lungs. It can appear suddenly and the cause is unknown.
Eaton May had been feeling a bit fatigued, but as a litigation attorney for many years, with offices in San Francisco and Hayward, she had learned how to work through fatigue. But when she looks back now, Eaton May knows it was the sarcoidosis.
LEADING THE WAY
She now serves on the American Lung Association of California’s Leadership Council in the East Bay and was actively involved in the association’s Women’s Lung Health Luncheon at the San Francisco Hilton featuring award-winning lecturer and author Bertice Berry, Ph.D.
Eaton May told her story at the luncheon in addition to helping plan the event and selling tables. She credits much of her sales success to her affiliation with Jack and Jill of America, Inc., the oldest and largest African American family organization in the United States.
The risk for sarcoidosis among African Americans in the U.S. is three times higher than for whites, according to the American Lung Association’s Lung Disease Data in Diverse Communities report. In addition, African American women are twice as likely to develop the disease as African American men.
In fact,African Americans face higher rates of other lung diseases as well, including asthma and lung cancer. And while the incidence rates are the same for certain diseases such as infant respiratory distress syndrome, mortality rates are higher for African Americans. “African Americans need to know we are at much higher risk from lung disease,” Eaton May says. “I am trying to help spread that message.”
