Steff Lebsack is a wife and mom of two who battles bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a chronic lung disease, among other lung diseases such as severe asthma and vocal cord dysfunction. Steff deals with breathing flares, which feel like a literal weight on her chest and, as she describes it, "I run out of room to breathe." Sometimes her vocal cords try to close along with everything else, and it can get to the point where she feels like she's trying to breathe through a straw. 

For the last two and a half years, Steff's insurance companies have covered her having a Trilogy machine at home to help her through the breathing flares, which decreases the risk of hospitalizations (potentially including invasive ventilation or medications that cause seizures) that take her away from the things she loves most — being a wife and mom, working with kids in the community as a high school cross-country coach, and being a fierce advocate for those who stutter as a speech-language pathologist and professor at Baylor University. The Trilogy machine has helped Steff avoid multiple hospitalizations over the last two years. When Steff's husband, a school teacher, was forced to switch insurance providers, the new provider (United Healthcare) stopped covering her use of the machine at home. 

As of October 9, Steff has needed the services of a hospital three times for acute hypoxemic respiratory failure since returning the Trilogy machine at the end of September. She needs the insurance company to again cover the machine, for the sake of her health and her quality of life.