Patient Story: Moving Forward with NTM

Jon Bernhard's drastic decline in health baffled physicians for a year and a half. Then Jon visited National Jewish Health, where he was diagnosed with NTM and found treatment and relief.

Transcript

I was 22 years old i was eating 7 or 8 thousand calories of food a day and I was still losing weight - couldn't breathe, I couldn't sleep. I literally went from being a top-flight bike racer, an athlete, to not being able to walk up a flight of stairs and for a year and a half, my health continued to deteriorate but nobody could come up with a specific diagnosis that made sense.

A physician in Tucson, Arizona, referred my case to Denver to National Jewish and within days, they were able to identify specifically what disease I had: NTM bacterial infection in my lungs, how to treat it, how to move forward.

Each and every medical staff member at National Jewish collaborates on each and every case and it's such an amazing orchestration to see how that happens. They're in my corner, they're my team, without National Jewish in my life I would not be a rock climber, I would not have summited peaks in Alaska; most likely by now I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for National Jewish - they keep me alive.