A doctor’s house is burned. Now he treats the effects of the fires at neighbors.

Another long -term concern is lung fibrosis, a progressive disease in which scars get fatter and lung tissue hardened, making it difficult for oxygen to go to the bloodstream. Dr. Elsayegh describes a lung with lung fibrosis as “a stiff balloon from the party shop” – your face rinses while you try to force air inside, but it just refuses to blow up.

As a former Palisades resident who is planning to return to the neighborhood, Dr. Elsayegh also as a trusted confidant, based on his personal experience to help his patients find confronted with uncertainties and find solutions – or at least the next steps, at least.

“In an ideal world I would go in there and say:” Everyone who lives in the Palisades and in La County, let’s all move. Let’s all go somewhere else and we don’t have to worry about this, “he said.” That is no reality. I try to find this incredibly difficult balance to help us be normal or return to our lives, but to do it as safely as possible. “

At the beginning of February Dr. Elsayegh on a chair next to Dana Michels, a cyber security lawyer and a healthy mother of three who had gone the damage in her house and could not shake cough now.

“Sweetheart, you don’t move air at all,” said Dr. Elsayegh, listening to her lungs through a stethoscope and quickly ordered a breath test and a nebulizer to start. A lung student asked to listen and then looked up at Dr. Elsayegh and looked confused.

“I don’t hear anything,” the student said. Dr. Elsayegh gave a single nod.

After years of renting, Mrs. Michels and her husband received their first mortgage almost four years ago; It was a milestone of the family. Now that their Palisades has been smoked home, the family is spread over two rental apartments in Marina del Rey – one for boys, one for girls – and they navigate a new school, new insurance paper and new recipes to manage the squeaking squeaking place.