Ragweed season has rolled in again, announced by the weather service with all the drama of a storm warning. They call it a “pollen outbreak,” but anyone living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) knows it’s more than a line in the forecast. It’s like someone shook a dusty…
Columns
Living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) means living by a rhythm — a quiet, steady kind that keeps the breath moving and the body from slipping into trouble. For years, my morning and evening routine from pulmonary rehabilitation had been my anchor. It wasn’t glamorous, but it worked.
Some mornings, before the world has fully awoken, I sit on my back deck in an old rocking chair and sip what I call my magic coffee. The mountains behind my house are still holding on to the last threads of night, and the air carries that soft hush that…
I’ve been thinking lately about how the language of a life shifts over time. Not the big, dramatic changes, not the kind that come with new jobs or new towns, but the quiet ones. The ones that slip into our vocabulary so gradually we hardly notice them until one day…
On summer nights, when the air settles soft over the hills, and the porch boards hold the day’s last warmth, I watch the lightning bugs rise. They drift up from the grass like sparks shaken loose from the earth, each one carrying its own small lantern. People talk about their…
Note: This column describes the author’s own experiences with various supplements. Not everyone will have the same response to treatment. Consult your doctor before starting or stopping a therapy. Up here in the hills of West Virginia, we’ve always believed in taking care of what you’ve got, because getting more…
Many of us fall into a quiet trap as we get older. A new ache will show up or a task will become harder than it used to be and we’ll shrug it off with a familiar “Well, I’m just getting older.” But aging is not a diagnosis, and…
I’ve learned that fear doesn’t always come from something that’s in front of us. Sometimes it rises from a much older place, a place the body remembers even when the mind has moved on. I can see this clearly now that I live with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD),…
Some teachers leave you with formulas and lab reports. Others leave you with something that follows you into the harder seasons of life, long after you’ve forgotten the periodic table. When I was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), I found myself reaching back to lessons I…
People who don’t have any experience with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) often imagine the oxygen tubing we use as the easy part. It’s a soft little line that trails behind us like a polite shadow. But those of us who depend on it know better. The tubing is…
Recent Posts
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- Injection therapy may cut rate, impact of severe COPD exacerbations
- Waiting on that one-thing-a-day season in my COPD journey to pass