Imagine. You're a young woman, in great shape, just married, in your prime, finally ready to start a family. But your back feels strangely sore. Your doctor says you're fine, all the tests are normal. Could it be stress? Perhaps. But you don't feel fine. You persist. Then a CAT scan shows scattered cysts throughout your lungs and a small mass near one of your kidneys.

You have lymphangioleiomyomatosis - LAM for short. Like many others, you've never heard of it. A fatal lung disease for which there is no effective treatment and no cure. It frequently attacks women in their childbearing years. LAM kills women by suffocating them to death. Pregnancy may accelerate the disease.

It can take years to get a definitive diagnosis. By then the disease may be advanced and you may already experience shortness of breath. Often LAM is misdiagnosed as asthma, bronchitis or emphysema. But your diagnosis was relatively quick and your disease is still relatively early along although you are uncertain about the pace at which your disease will progress. You believe that you have a window of opportunity to do everything in your power to support the work of finding a way to stop the disease in its tracks. To fight, get active, to support researchers who have done work on the disease. To start getting them talking more often and thinking collaboratively with leaders in other fields relevant to LAM - scientists and doctors who find the disease interesting, but who have not yet conducted research on the disease or who have perhaps just started.

These researchers understand that LAM, although rare, can teach us about more common serious diseases including breast cancer, prostate cancer, melanoma, atherosclerosis and diabetes. With your help, they may find an effective treatment for LAM and gain insight into those other serious diseases.