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♪MUSIC♪
BOB GARRETT: My name is Bob Garrett I'm a Respiratory
Therapist and a Pulmonary Technologist at Mercy Regional
Health Center here in Manhattan, Kansas.
I'm here today and over the weekend here to do spirometries
here at the Country Stampede.
WOMAN 1: I've been diagnosed with COPD since 2002 so it was
kind of cool to come in and take a test again to see exactly what
the lung capacity is.
At one point in time I was in a wheelchair because I couldn't
walk because of the oxygen not going through my system.
And now today I'm not in a wheelchair
and I can walk around.
WOMAN 2: No I did not know anything about COPD before I
came into your room today.
I learned that I had great lung capacity.
That I didn't know that I had before.
I have 99% so I'm very excited about that.
WOMAN 3: A friend mine had been diagnosed with COPD and I did
not know what it was and then I've seen a bunch of your people
walking around with the black COPD bags.
So I thought I'd walk up and see it was about.
WOMAN 4: I actually am a Registered Nurse so I stopped by
the COPD tent just because obviously in nursing we deal
with it a lot and I was curious what it would be doing in a
setting like this.
It was kind of intriguing because I'm sure there's a lot
of people here that either smoke or are around second hand smoke.
My husband is a smoker so I'm around it,
so I was very curious to see what they had going on what kind
of tests they could do.
BOB GARRETT: What we did here this weekend is we did over 700
spirometry tests on people who probably normally
wouldn't do this test.
We had a lot of people who came in and they said oh I get short
of breath because I'm out of shape or things like that.
And then we start doing the test and we start seeing issues like
decreased flow, decreased volume and things that can be an issue.
Now they may not be having problems now but down the line
there is the probability that they are going to be affected by
some sort of lung disease such as COPD.
WOMAN 3: I learned that it's not only caused from smoking,
that there are other things in the air that can cause COPD.
I thought the spirometry test was pretty cool
how you tested for it.
I liked how you had to do it 3 times to make
sure it was legitimate.
WOMAN 2: And one of our friends that came with us she did the
COPD, the COPD test as well and her lung capacity was only at 78
she grew up in a house full of smokers,
and she smokes herself.
But after she had the test she was like wow,
she's only 25 years old and she has a 78%.
WOMAN 1: It's great to have the COPD tent out here because it
brings the awareness for everybody else out there that
doesn't know what COPD stands for as well as what it,
what it means to people that have it.
MAN: For the public health it's a great idea because it does
give people that aren't aware or people that have been
smoking that might not know how diminished
their lung capacity is.
WOMAN 2: I think it's awesome that you guys come around to the
music festivals and teach people and educate them because like I
said my friend had no idea what hers was,
I had no idea what mine was, what my score was.
BOB GARRETT: Doing them here at Country Stampede is really
kind of a neat atmosphere.
We've never, I've never seen it anywhere else.
We've done them in malls over a short period of time but doing
them in this type of venue with this type of population is
pretty amazing.
I'm really happy for the turnout that we got because I feel like
we made a difference.
And that's important.
And I said you know even if you just found one person whose
numbers were bad and they took care of it
you know it's worth it.