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Taking the wheeze out of lung disease
Brentwood Press
Ray Carter
5/09/2008
I have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), but I'm not alone. Over 12 million Americans have been diagnosed with COPD and probably another 12 million don't yet realize they have it.
What is COPD? It's often a combination of lung problems such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis and asthma. It cannot be cured and, while medical science has succeeded in lowering the death rate from most other dread diseases, COPD mortality increased by an astounding 163 percent between 1965 and 1998. The disease is now the fourth leading cause of death, ranks second in cause of disability and accounts for 2 million annual hospitalizations.
Five out of six people with COPD got it due to years of smoking and, as we age, our lungs become permanently damaged by this killer habit, eventually leading to COPD's dreaded symptoms: coughing, wheezing and increasing shortness of breath. Last year, COPD treatment cost over $23 billion in hospitalizations, doctor visits, emergency room treatment, supplemental oxygen, lung transplants and drugs costs. According to the World Health Gold Study, in the next 20 years the cost is expected to run more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to be referred by my pulmonary specialist, Dr. Hsien-Wen Hsu, to a program that can and does ameliorate the effects of COPD, making it easier to live with and reducing the frightening shortness of breath. The program is called Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PHab) and the closest program is administered by the John Muir Health system located in Concord.
I am now in a twice-weekly follow-up maintenance program held at the John Muir Medical Center in Brentwood. About 15 of us are led in a series of stretching and toning exercises by Program Facilitator Cindy Cayou. She is the perfect instructor, gently pushing her patients to perform while making the process fun. Her method inspires results. "I love what I do," she said, "because I can see how much it bene- fits the people I work with."
If you have symptoms of COPD or another lung disease and would like more information about joining a pulmonary rehabilitation program, talk with your physician first. He or she will need to formally refer you to a program and probably require you to obtain a pulmonary test to determine the extent of your disease. After referral, you might be asked to fill out an extensive questionnaire, followed by a detailed interview. If you qualify for the program, you will typically receive a detailed manual, a course guide and schedule of classroom instruction and exercise.
While I cannot guarantee any PHab program will do as much for you as it has done for me, my advice to any lung disease patient is: don't put off finding out how much this option might improve your quality of life. Cultivating a friendship with people who have the same lung problems you do is also a marvelous way of joining an informal support group that can help you deal with your disease more effectively.
(Posted May 21, 2008)