An Alberta man is looking to continue his walk in support of Alberta Lung with the help of his fellow Albertans. Chris Sadleir started the Walk to Breathe challenge to honour his father, a double lung transplant survivor, in 2020 and 2021 by walking 840 kilometres across Alberta. However, an injury put a hold on continuing the journey of walking across the province, making Sadlier pivot his vision.
In partnership with Alberta Lung, the “Walk to Breathe Move Challenge” launched at the end of July, encouraging residents to join Sadlier on his journey of spreading awareness about lung disease by walking, running, biking, or even dancing.
“Almost a million Albertans, every single day, struggle to breathe for some reason, and all those reasons fall under Alberta Lung,” Sadlier says. “This year, we have made [the campaign] a little more engaging and all-encompassing for Albertans to get involved because, throughout my journey over the past few years, I have had people reach out to me and ask ‘how can we get involved, what can we do besides just donating?'”
The challenge is free to participate in, and those taking part are encouraged to log their “move minutes,” as collectively, the goal is for a million to be logged before the challenge ends on September 4th.
Along with the movement challenge, those wanting to can also support the fundraising side of the campaign by supporting Breathe Space, a yet-to-be-built facility in Edmonton where transplant patients and their families can go during recovery. Sadlier explains Edmonton is one of only four facilities across Canada that does lung transplant surgeries, which means those who need a transplant and qualify along with their support person most likely will need to leave their jobs, homes and communities, stay in temporary accommodations, all of which he says can be costly.
“When my parents came up from Calgary, they were lucky enough to have me living in Edmonton, so for the four months that they had to stay through recovery, they were able to stay with me, and I was able to offset some of those costs. But, the fact is that 77 percent of Albertans live outside of Edmonton – so if you are from outside of Edmonton and you have to stay for four months with your support person, in this case, it was my mother, they, on average, face upwards of $80,000 of out of pocket expenses.”
He adds that because of the cost, a significant number of people choose to not go through with the surgery, choosing rather “imminent death.” The cost to build the state-of-the-art facility is $15 million.