Where do the Children Play?

admin | Jun 15, 2009 | Comments 6

The next wave of asbestos victims

by Paul Peters

St. Louis resident Julie Gundlach’s life changed forever in August of 2006, when she was diagnosed with mesothelioma cancer at just 35 years old.
Her diagnosis with this deadly disease is unusual, but may be part of a growing trend.
Mesothelioma normally strikes older men who were heavily exposed to asbestos in occupational settings-at plants where it was processed, in mines, or in professions that brought them into contact with insulation and other building materials in which asbestos was heavily used.
This may have been the case with Gundlach’s father, who died in 2005, at the age of 63, from lung cancer. Gregg Gundlach had worked for 30 years as a commercial electrician, coming into contact with insulation and fireproofing materials on a frequent basis. Asbestos was routinely used in these types of materials until the mid-1980s.
The lungs are one of the primary places mesothelioma attacks, and from there it spreads very quickly. People diagnosed with mesothelioma in their lungs, which is known as pleural mesothelioma, generally live for just weeks or months.
Gregg Gundlach died only six weeks after diagnosis.
At that time, Julie Gundlach says her family was not aware of asbestos or the diseases it can cause, and so they never had any tests done to determine whether it was the culprit in his death. Gregg Gundlach’s body was cremated, without a biopsy or an autopsy ever having been performed.
Then, two years later, Julie Gundlach became ill. She discovered the link between mesothelioma and asbestos then, and now thinks her father’s death and her sickness may have been connected.
When she was a child, Gundlach says her play area was also the laundry room, where her dad’s possibly asbestos-laden clothes were washed and dried. She believes that to be the source of her exposure, although it’s impossible to know for sure.

A Rare Diagnosis

Gundlach laughs telling the story about how she first discovered she had mesothelioma.
“I was constipated,” she says bluntly. “I tried a bunch of herbal stuff, ate prunes, drank prune juice, and nothing was making it any better, so within a week I went to the doctor.”
Her doctor ordered a CT scan for Gundlach, which revealed an unusual tissue mass inside her pelvis, and fluid in one of her lungs.

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