Thousands of jobs and thousands of new people, for me it was a dream come true. I never had to work at the factory, but one of the people who came to the city for a job was the man who would soon become my husband. After a short courtship we married and moved into a house on the outskirts of the city. His job involved making plumbing equipment for export around the world.
He used to describe how there would be a cloud of dust so thick you could barely see the people you were working with and as the years went on he developed as sort of smokers cough, even though he never smoked a day in his life. I always worried about the dust he worked in because it would come home as a thick covering on his clothes and shoes, even in his hair. It did not bother him much but I did my best to get it out of his clothing by doing the laundry daily.
Exposure to Asbestos
Doing the laundry everyday was no bother for me. I was a simple housewife in a modest home. We never had any children, so aside from meeting with my friends and family, I had little to do other than handling all the things involved with our home. The dust my husband came home covered in was an annoyance though.
It irritated my skin when I touched his clothes and seemed to instantly coat everything in the house. No matter how much washing I did, it never seemed to completely come out. After years of dealing with the dust my husband retired, but by then I had a horrible cough which my doctor said was due to being around the asbestos dust for so many years. My doctor said the dust had fibers that probably irritated my throat and lungs but that it was not something to be worried about. I took cough suppressants for years but nothing ever seemed to get rid of the cough.
Diagnosis of Mesothelioma
The factory shut down in 1986 due to widespread closures of factories that processed components using asbestos. We moved out of the area so my husband could find work in a steel mill out of state. I had to find a new doctor who took a greater interest in my lung health because by then my cough had gotten pretty bad. He was unable to find anything conclusive for a number of years. Finally in 1994 I had my chest x-rayed and the doctor found evidence of fluid building up in my lungs.
He ran what seemed like every conceivable test which included taking a sample of tissue from my chest and a sample of the fluid. After these samples came back from testing the doctor said there was a good chance I would be diagnosed with cancer. I was taken aback! I had never smoked, nor had my husband or anyone in my family. I could not fathom how it was possible for me to have any kind of cancer. The doctor took my full medical history and even asked about cancer in my family. No one had developed cancer or been really sick at all. It took about six months of testing and talking before we stumbled upon my asbestos exposure from my husband’s laundry and the doctor immediately requested tests for mesothelioma. Within a couple weeks we discovered that I had developed pleural mesothelioma from exposure 30 years prior.
Legal Matters
We began reading about the disease and how the people who knew about asbestos related illnesses covered it up from the people exposed. No one ever told us that we were at risk or that in our twilight years we would develop debilitating diseases. We immediately sought legal assistance from a law firm that specialized in mesothelioma cases.
The guaranteed they would not take a cent of our money until they had secured our future with a decent sized settlement. They were true to their word. After about a year in negotiations, because my health was in fair condition, a settlement was reached in the amount of 4 million dollars for pain and suffering, loss of quality of life and they promised to pay the full amount of my medical expenses. |
