Surviving The Loss Of Mesothelioma Victims

At least 40 men in five northeastern Minnesota counties have been diagnosed with mesothelioma between 1998 and 2005. Although the number may seem small, it is alarming for several reasons.

First, some cases may go undiagnosed or are misdiagnosed; meaning the actual number of mesotheliomas could be greater. Exposure to airborne asbestos also increases the risk of lung cancer which in turn decreases the mesothelioma survival rate. For smokers, that risk is at least doubled.

Moreover, for every case of mesothelioma, health officials fear that scores of others who breathed the same fibers may develop other crippling lung diseases, from asbestosis to chronic bronchitis. And because health officials do not know where the men were exposed to asbestos, they cannot say for certain whether workers continue to breathe the fibers.

"Mesothelioma is probably the tip of the iceberg. It should raise a red flag anywhere," says the section chief for chronic disease and environmental epidemiology for the Health Department. "What makes this unique is the continuing concerns and our inability to address those concerns. We've got problems elsewhere, but what makes this so problematic is it continues to recur."

To be sure, the low survival rate of asbestos-related cancers may prove to be simple coincidence. For example, workers exposed to asbestos elsewhere may have moved to the area, where their cancers were later diagnosed. But because mesothelioma doesn't appear until 20 to 40 years after asbestos exposure, tracing the source of the cancer is difficult and costly.

"If I lived up there, I know what I'd want the commissioner of health to say, or my legislators to say, which is, 'Yes, you should be concerned,"' says state Health Commissioner. "People have died and will continue to die from this disease."

But without money and the cooperation of area industries, he says health officials have not been able to examine the work histories of the men to determine where they breathed the fibers. That explanation has offered little comfort to the family and co-workers of Storbeck and others who died of the cancer. Some wonder if the same cancer might soon strike them.

"There are friends of my dad who are still alive, and they are walking on pins and needles," says Storbeck's son, Lee. "It's a fact that there's asbestos up there, and it's a fact that people are ignoring it.

"No one is saying anything about it. No one is doing anything about it. And the question is, why?"
In Grand Rapids, Donna Paulouski still grieves the 2002 death of her husband, Claude, who worked in a paper mill. For six months after he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, she watched helplessly as he withered away. He died at age 70.

"He was the healthiest person you ever saw," Paulouski recalls. "It was hell."

In Chisholm, Shirley Kordish lost her husband of 34 years to mesothelioma. Walter Kordish died in 1997, just five months after he was diagnosed. The former pipe-fitter was only 61.

A few miles away, Carole Vidmar spent days and nights in a hospice until her husband, Joseph, died in April 2007. The former warehouse worker was 79. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma nearly two decades after retiring. So, that means that the mesothalioma survival rate is really very low.

Mesothelioma