By first grade, Kristina Friman was using a nebulizer twice a day to keep her asthma in check. Her medication regimen included theophylline, Entex, mucomyst, and, for acute attacks, adrenaline injections. Still, her asthma only got worse: By fourth grade, she had been hospitalized multiple times and suffered a collapsed lung. At a loss for what to try next, her doctors recommended a radical form of treatment. When her parents presented it to Friman, however, the idea wasn’t so much a recommendation as a final hope.

“I was ‘asked’ if I wanted to go to this place to get better,” Friman says. “I must have said yes, because I remember trying to back out. My mother made it clear that it was too late.”

In October 1974, 10-year-old Friman left her hometown of Houston for Denver and the Children’s Asthma Research Institute and Hospital or, as everyone called it, CARIH (pronounced “Carrie”). Friman would remain in Colorado for the next 18 months.

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