I’m Aware That I’m Rare: Bill Lickman (287)

The phaware® interview

Pulmonary Hypertension patient and military veteran, Bill Lickman discusses his road to diagnosis and the importance of great caregiver support.

My name is Bill Lickman. I’m a pulmonary hypertension patient.

I was stationed military duty in the South and Mississippi, and I was already to get out and be redeployed back home. I was having some issues, so I figured I’d go into the doctors and check on what was going on. I was having trouble breathing and they were treating me for asthma and they couldn’t find anything wrong.

My late wife, who was a nurse practitioner said, “Have them check your heart.” So they did this new procedure, [an echocardiogram], on me and saw that my right heart was enlarged. They did our right heart catheterization and they had to stop the procedure, because my pressure was so high, it was in the 90s. That’s how they diagnosed me with PH.

This was in November of 2006. Once I demobilized back to Michigan, I was in contact with the University of Michigan, with…