SAND SPRINGS, Okla. — A Sand Springs woman is hosting a Pulmonary Fibrosis awareness walk in September in honor of her late husband.
Stephanie Hagar wears her husband Michael’s ashes and wedding ring around her neck and has a tattoo in his honor on her wrist. They were married for less than a year when he lost his fight with Pulmonary Fibrosis.
Diagnosed at just 49, the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation describes the disease as “scarring in the lungs.”
Hagar told FOX23 her husband spent months in and out of the hospital and his dependence on oxygen only got worse with time.
“He suffered with this disease, he couldn’t breathe,” she said.
About a year after he was diagnosed, Michael died in April 2022 at age 50. He was less than two weeks away from preparation for a double lung transplant, which his wife said was his only shot at survival. Hagar said she had never heard of this disease and wants to make sure that is not the case for others, so she is hosting an awareness walk at the end of September, or Pulmonary Fibrosis Awareness Month.
“I want to bring awareness to it, that way there’s more research, and hopefully one day a cure, because I don’t want somebody else out there to have to suffer like he had to suffer, because he didn’t deserve it,” she says.
The walk is scheduled for Saturday, September 24 at Ray Brown Park in Sand Springs. The walk loops around the park totaling less than a mile. It’s free to participate, but Hagar is collecting donations for the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation.
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