Hello! My name is Jeannie Holder, and I would like to introduce myself as your AlphaNet Coordinator.
I live in Chickamauga, GA, just across the city and state line of Chattanooga TN. I have two beautiful, talented daughters, who are both educators, a son-in-law, and three amazing grandsons. We are a baseball family and love everything SEC
My Alpha-1 journey started during the summer of 2017, I began to feel a loss of energy and I knew something just didn’t seem quite right. At the time, I was employed at an Imaging Center where they had MRI, CT, X-ray, and Mammography testing devices. It was in July of 2017 when I was at work when I began to feel pressure on my chest. I could hardly walk from one room to the next. I had a chest X-ray that very day. Two hours later the Radiologist at our Center came into my office and asked, “Do you smoke? Ever smoke? Closet smoker?” The answer to all was emphatically NO, never. He indicated my lungs were so hyper-inflated they were resting on my aorta, and it looked like I had smoked my entire life.
The Radiologist contacted a pulmonologist right away, who was also in the same building we both worked at. Within minutes an RN arrived at my office to prick my finger for a blood sample. I later learned that anyone that walks in his door as a new patient will have a blood test for Alpha1 Antitrypsin Deficiency.
I knew about Alpha 1 as my supervisor’s husband was an Alpha and a double transplant recipient. Two weeks after the test, I received my diagnosis. Soon after my diagnosis, everything started happening, I began researching on my own receiving information from AlphaNet, it wasn’t long before I was scheduled for augmentation therapy, I knew the value of the therapy and wanted to do my part to be healthy. I began walking more and changed my eating habits to a healthier lifestyle.
I am so grateful to have an amazing support system from my family. friends, my medical physicians, and nurses. I know the importance of an AlphaNet Coordinator as I have had great coordinators within my own Alpha-1 journey and look forward to continuing this same type of support, to others in their own Alpha-1 journey.