The doctors and staff of Florida Lung, Asthma and Sleep Specialists enjoy bringing you at least three kinds of stories.
In one type of story, we present you with cutting edge discoveries in respiratory research, as we did in our previous blog.
Lucy’s New Rules For A New Life After COPD Diagnosis
Hope is on the Horizon.
In another type of story, we enjoy bringing you tips concerning the treatments, drugs, therapies and lifestyle choices that improve the quality of our patients’ lives.
Likewise, the third type of story is the human interest story. For our third type of story, we might weave our health tips or special features into a personalized fictional account of a patient coping with lung disease. Although our colorful character might be fictional, he or she represents typical symptoms, treatments, and emotions of many patients/.
Florida Lung, Asthma and Sleep Specialists refer to this as the third type of story as This human interest or “case-study story.” We begin this week’s blog with just such a case-study story.
Meet Lucy. Although she is 67 years old, Lucy is a young widowed lady who loves to have fun. She has always delighted in entertaining friends, having parties, working with charity groups, and going out on the town.
Until recently she loved dancing and night-clubbing and she adored her matching elegant silver cigarette case and lighter. For 30 years, she had been smoking. Then in 2016, she found out the cause of her steadily worsening smoker’s cough: COPD.
Her COPD diagnosis mandated new rules. Although adopting new habits can be almost overwhelming, the rewards of a new lifestyle after COPD Diagnosis are great. To make it easier for her and for hundreds like her, FLASS submits for your perusal, the Ten COPD Coping Commandments below:
The FLASS Ten Commandments of Coping With COPD
1. Thou shalt not smoke.
Lungs heal. They can get stronger and function at their best if a smoker stops smoking. Your heart will also thank you.
“For people with COPD, quitting smoking is highly recommended.” This was a huge challenge for Lucy. She adored the smoke-filled jazz clubs of her home town. She felt punnished, but she found great support among friends and information on the Internet to help her stop this self-destructive habit.
2. Thou shalt not stress yourself about appointments and special events. Thou shalt give thyself 10-20 extra minutes of departure
time. You see, wheezing and shortness of breath can be triggered by the stressed rushing to go somewhere. causing more shortness of breath or wheezing.
3. Thou shalt create new ways to do the special things you enjoy. For Lucy, this meant learning to kneel rather than lean over when she worked in her garden. She has to time work-breaks also when she gardens or does her light housekeeping. Sometimes she has to give up social activities that might exacerbate her condition.
4. Thou shalt communicate about COPD with family and friends.
Lucy vowed to share information about her COPD with them. She says, “If others understand that certain activities are more
A grin from her helpful grandson helps Lucy cope with COPD in more ways than one.
difficult, they will probably surprise you with the amount of support they show!”
If you are not hiding your disease or ashamed of it, you are giving people the opportunity to help you.
Lucy learned to turn over the lawn-mowing, a secret pleasure, to her grandson. Much to her surprise, this sacrifice turned into developing more time to visit with him and become more involved in listening to the details of his life and decisions as he faced age 17.
She says, “I wouldn’t trade all the lawn mowing empowerment in the world for that new level of relationship with this amazing young man!”
5. Thou shalt honor thy medical team.
If you are diagnosed with COPD, you must understand your treatment plan. Know that your new professional support team will include nurses who give medication, technicians, therapists, social workers, dietitians, and even psychologists. Your team will help you thrive on getting well. Communication with your support team of medical professionals “plays an important role in helping a person with COPD stay as healthy as possible.”
6. Thou shalt maintain your FLASS treatment plan, including regular exercise as well as breathing exercises.
In spite of her COPD challenges, Lucy and patients like her are finding plenty of reasons to smile!
If possible, you can attend pulmonary rehabilitation appointments. This has helped Lucy immensely.
“Many patients have regular pulmonary rehabilitation appointments. A study in the International Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease suggests that pulmonary rehab can help people with COPD lead quality lives in a number of ways, including increasing their ability to exercise.”
This concludes the first six “commandments” for coping with COPD. Lucy found them challenging. But next week, if you return to the FLASS Blog, you will see the remaining four commandments and learn about the surprising one she found to be the most challenging!
