Why a first responder with COPD won’t stop moving: ‘I don’t want to die on the day I did nothing’

Korin Miller
·Writer
Updated ·3 min read

As a firefighter, Eddy Weiss traveled around the country to help people who had just gone through a natural disaster. But helping the people of Joplin, Missouri, in 2011 after a devastating tornado would turn out to be disastrous for his health.

“Joplin was the home of old lead mines,” Weiss tells Yahoo Lifestyle. The tornado stirred up lead fragments, dust, and other toxins, and made a lot of people sick as a result, he says. “What I didn’t realize is that there had a been a lot of people that had gotten infected in Joplin and that there were first responders who had lost their lives because of an infection they had inhaled,” Weiss shares.

He went home after helping with the disaster and says he had “a horribly sore throat…scratchy, coughing, sneezing, and it got worse.” At one point, the cough got so bad that he passed out. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with COPD (or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), an umbrella term that encompasses several different lung problems, including emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and refractory asthma.

Weiss says his doctor told him that he had five years to live if he kept going with his lifestyle, or 10 years if he made changes. “COPD is not something you can screw around with. It’s debilitating,” he says, noting that he has breathing attacks at night and wonders if he’ll die. “My poor wife, how many times I woke her up. I didn’t wake her up to help me. I woke her up just to see her one more time because what if that’s it,” he says. “COPD put me in a much darker place than my career had already put me.”

Now, Weiss says he has a panic attack if an escalator or elevator is out. “I’m trapped. I can’t take the stairs,” he says. “Halfway down those stairs could be the last step I take. There’s a psychological side to COPD that is evil because you can make yourself worse by worrying about how bad you are.”

While living with the disease is scary, Weiss says he’s trying to make the most of every moment, including having a baby at age 55. He’s also doing a podcast with his grown son, Jon, called In the Arena. “The name stems from the 1910 speech by Teddy Roosevelt — my hero — who admonished the world by saying that it is not the critics that count at the end of the day, but those who stand in the arena getting their boots dirty, losing blood to save the rest.”

Weiss adds: “I’m still making every second count. I’m not going to stop moving. I don’t want to die on the day I did nothing. If I die, it’s going to be a high-speed death because I’m going to be moving.”

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