Shirley Mazzucotelli lost her partner of 15 years, Bill Wellman, to COPD in January 2010.

Bill & Shirley

“He told me that I was the best thing that ever happened in his life. I want people to be aware that they need to put that cigarette down. He tried, but his addiction was still there,” she says. “As hard as it hurt, I hung in there and saw him through until the end. I think we are stronger than we think we are, and we have more courage than we think we do.”

Mazzucotelli, who was his partner beginning in 1994, says Wellman began smoking at the age of 15, and quit only a year before he passed at the age of 67. She was his caregiver for the last four years of his life, experiencing firsthand the progression of the disease.

“He smoked about a pack a day, and nothing worked [for him to quit]. He began to get a shortness of breath around 2006, and he got anxiety and would think he was having a heart attack,” she says of Wellman, who also battled depression.

Mazzucotelli wanted to share Wellman’s story because she wants to emphasize the negative aspects of smoking.

“I knew what COPD was, I had seen patients with it on oxygen gasping for breath, but I had never experience it firsthand.”

She says that he would feel isolated at times, although she was there.

“He could drive at times, and then he wouldn’t be up for it. He got weak and I’d have to help him out of his chair, and I did the cooking, etc. I just did whatever was necessary. I helped him and he tried to be as independent as he could be, even until the night he passed away,” she says.

“We had to just take things one day at a time. I was there for him and encouraged him as much as I could.”