Wanda remembers one of the first conversations she had with Delmer before they married 17 years ago. “He told me, ‘Now I have this heart problem and I want you to know that,’” she recalls. They were both in their 60s and in love. “It was love at first sight and it has been the happiest 17 years of my life!” Delmer knew his health would be something they both would need to navigate throughout their relationship, and Wanda knew she would be right by his side no matter what happened.

Teddy Hansen took her medication like clockwork. If she didn’t, she suffered. “There would be burning all the way up my throat,” she says of the recourse from skipping either her morning or evening heartburn medication. “Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to eat or get out of bed. I had been to a lot of doctors and was on the best prescription medications. All the tests I took showed that I was still having reflux. I lost weight, but that didn’t help. I was still on multiple pills a day.”

December is typically one of the worst months for Lynnda Chambers, 61. “Anyone who had a cold, I would catch it and get pneumonia,” she says. “I was very hesitant to be around any of my 17 grandchildren.” Lynnda had suffered from continuous bouts of pneumonia for 10 years. At the end of last winter, Lynnda was so sick from the flu, which developed into bronchitis and finally pneumonia once again, she had a chest x-ray. It revealed she had suffered damage to one of her lungs. Lynnda was diagnosed with adult onset asthma as well.