Life Tethered to a Concentrator — Caroline Gainer

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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.

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Movement isn’t optional with COPD, so I turned to Voltaren to get my steps back

Note: This column describes the author’s experiences with Voltaren. Not everyone will have the same response to treatment. Consult your doctor before starting or stopping a therapy. There’s a particular kind of pain that settles low in the back, right over those little dimples on each side of the spine.

Caroline Gainer

Losing myself, finding myself: How recovery is harder with COPD

There are times in life when illness doesn’t just slow you down— it rearranges you. I didn’t see it happening at first. I thought I was simply tired or behind, in need of a weekend to catch up. But slowly, almost quietly, I began to lose the version of myself…

Redrawing the geography of my life one breath at a time

There are days when I realize my world has grown smaller without my permission. After illness, the boundaries of daily life contract almost imperceptibly. A trip that once felt routine — like driving to Tamarack, West Virginia, a place I’ve known for years — suddenly feels foreign, as…

A diagnosis is a map that shows our way through an unknown land

When I was in my 20s, I was diagnosed with cancer over a phone call. What a way to practice medicine, but I felt something I didn’t expect: relief. Not because the diagnosis was easy — it wasn’t — but because the not‑knowing had been worse. The fear lived in…

Applying wise old sayings to a different body with COPD

I grew up in a home where encouragement was woven into the walls. My mother offered it from the kitchen table while stirring supper and guiding me through homework. My father shared it from his living room chair, patient and steady as he walked me through math problems. Their sayings…

Living with COPD isn’t a test that I have to pass

I’ve spent a long time believing I wrote this column for other people — for anyone trying to build a decent life with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), who wakes up each morning negotiating with their own lungs. While that’s still part of it, lately, I’ve realized something I…

Getting better with COPD means doing the work the way our ancestors did

Getting better with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) isn’t a passive hope. It’s a practice of daily choosing, and sometimes it feels like the choosing is the hardest part. No one hands you a syllabus when you’re diagnosed. There’s no neat checklist taped to the refrigerator that says,…

A tip on oxygen concentrator maintenance: Try ‘blowing the drip’

Growing up in West Virginia, free natural gas was one of those peculiar perks of living along the oil and gas rights-of-way. Landowners granted access in exchange for this benefit, and it kept our homes warm — but not without complications. On the coldest nights, the gas would sputter out,…

What an old racehorse taught me about being first with COPD

My husband and I once took two foster kids for a horseback ride at a friend’s stable, hoping to give them a memory that would settle into their bones and stay there. When we arrived, all but three of the steady, predictable horses were already spoken for. The only one…


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