Living with COPD

I was just recently released from the hospital where I was diagnosed with COPD Diagnosis was delayed due to other health conditions and now I find myself with my lifeline - oxygen. I am 54 years old. Smoked 29 years. Grew up with parents who smoked, worked around chemicals that I later found out were bad for your lungs. Quit smoking January 2006 for 8 months. Puff, cough, puff, cough. Breathing was better at first, then came down with pnemonia and treated for pnemonia.

As summer came and went, I noticed that it was getting harder to catch my breath. I used to walk my dog every day, take steps 2 at a time. I would call myself the Energizer Bunny due to the fact that I have not let my other health issues get me down. I keep going and going. This time I was scared, a battery died. I went to see the lung doctor for the first time and was immeditately hospitalized.

We never realize how valuable life is. So it does go, “when you have your health, you have everything.”

I lost my mother to lung cancer and she had been diagnosed with pnemonia. Had she been diagnosed sooner, she might still be here. I have a spot on my lung that will not clear up. They tested it and it was not cancer (thank God), just pneumonia that will not go away. I am on high dose steriods that they give transplant patients.

So, please, please, if you are a smoker take another look at yourself. Is that stick worth your life? It is when you are down on the ground gasping for air like a fish out of water.

I am recently married to the man of my life, my soulmate, my friend, my lover, and I pray the good Lord gives us many years together. I know I will never pick up a cigarette again. Tough lesson learned.