Life Tethered to a Concentrator — Caroline Gainer

Main banner for Caroline Gainer's column, "Life Tethered to a Concentrator"

Caroline Gainer is from West Virginia, the state with the highest rate of COPD in the United States. She was diagnosed with moderate-to-severe COPD in 2013 after a pneumothorax (lung collapse). After two more lung collapses she was diagnosed as severe. She has been very active with the American Lung Association and the COPD Foundation as an advocate for people with lung disease. She hopes that her column, “Life Tethered to a Concentrator,” will inspire others to live their best life with COPD.

Featured Post

A kitchen memory holds a lesson about tenderness while living with COPD

The other day, while preparing one of my favorite meals, I reached for the pan where I’d just fried pork chops. Instead of rinsing it, I poured water straight into the sizzling skillet, watching the browned bits loosen and swirl like sediment in a creek bed. When I poured this…

Caroline Gainer

How humming and nasal irrigation have helped me avoid infection

Usually, by this point in the spring, I’ve had at least one upper respiratory infection — a common complication of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). My last one was particularly problematic and led to double pneumonia. I was in the hospital for eight days and required noninvasive ventilation for…

My journey with long-term supplemental oxygen due to COPD

While the name of this column is “Life Tethered to a Concentrator,” so far, I haven’t yet discussed my journey with long-term supplemental oxygen. Today, I’d like to take you along on that journey. I was in denial — one of the five stages of grief —…

Why mornings became difficult after my COPD diagnosis

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is cruel in that it can cause some of our good habits to be replaced with bad ones. For instance, my mornings used to be very productive, but after COPD turned my life upside down, mornings became a struggle, and I no longer looked…

Recent Posts


Explore More Columns