Jose Luis Rodríguez “El Puma” left the audience in shock when he came on stage during a presentation at Barranquilla, Colombia looking completely different than they are used to seeing him. He looked tired, thin, his hair completely white, and was accompanied by an oxygen tank. The singer suffers from pulmonary fibrosis and has been dealing with this incurable disease since 2000.
The singer didn’t want to cancel the show, even when just a couple of days he had two catheterizations. During a cardiac catheterization, a long tube called a catheter is inserted in an artery or vein in your groin, neck, or arm and threaded through your blood vessels to your heart.
Pulmonary hypertension happens when the pressure within the blood vessels of the lungs gets elevated. When idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis progresses, lung tissue is replaced by fibrosis or scar formation and there is a reduction in the blood vessels that move blood through the lungs. Over time those pressures increase and lead to the development of pulmonary hypertension.
“Pulmonary fibrosis has no cure. It all started since 2000,” said “El Puma” to People in 2014. He had a crisis on a flight from Los Angeles to Miami, where he started suffocating, he couldn’t breathe, so he asked for oxygen.
Unfortunately pulmonary fibrosis is an incurable disease and its something that makes your lungs weaker because it makes breathing difficult. The singer does therapy and at the age of 73, he’s doing his best to live with the disease. “I’m hoping for a miracle from Christ for my body with this and if God allows me to live a couple of more years or if I have to go soon, I don’t know,” said the legend during an interview with Caracol Show.
Check out his latest appearance here:
