No doubt about it… being diagnosed and living with COPD can bring on big changes in your life. After all, you have a disease that is likely to cause a decline in your physical abilities and activities, and challenges to your emotional health as well. In this blog post, you will find more questions than answers. But that’s okay. Sometimes the best way to find important answers is to ask yourself questions, then step back, be still, and listen to your heart.
When you’ve been diagnosed with COPD, you may wonder, “So, is this who I am now? A person with COPD and everything that comes with it – shortness of breath, a chronic cough? Is my life – as I knew it – now gone? What about me? What about the essence, the soul of me – the things that make me, me? Is that person still there?
Okay… let’s think this through and figure it out.
Hold on… Drop your shoulders, take a deep breath in through your nose… Close your eyes… Put your lips together and blow that air out longer than you breathed it in. Take a minute to ask yourself, “Before I was diagnosed with COPD, what did I like to do? What were my favorite things? What helped me feel really good about myself? It may be that out of your answers to these questions, all those feelings and experiences, every one of them, now seem to be way beyond your reach.
Hold on… Drop your shoulders, take a deep breath in through your nose… Close your eyes… Put your lips together and blow that air out longer than you breathed it in… Chances are you’ve had challenges in your life, heartaches and heartbreaks. Even so, everything you’ve done – all your life experiences up to this point have contributed to making you the person you are now, at this moment in time. However you defined yourself before you had COPD, you are still that person, but now that same person facing a new challenge. Simply, you are the same you – but a you with COPD. And do you know what? The essence, the soul of you, is still there.
Hold on… Drop your shoulders, take a deep breath in through your nose… Close your eyes… Put your lips together and blow that air out longer than you breathed it in… You are at the start of a new time in your life. Maybe that involves doing some of the same things you’ve always done, but doing them differently, just more slowly. It could be that you decide to become involved in COPD advocacy, helping inform and educate people about COPD – and maybe finding new friends in the process. Or perhaps it’s a good time to take on something you’ve always wanted to do but didn’t have time for.
Jo-Von Tucker*, a wise lady with COPD, said, “Instead of focusing on what our disease makes us, it can become more a matter of “given my limitations, can I choose to be the same me? We shouldn’t judge ourselves too harshly. We must forgive ourselves for what may have happened in the past and focus on the joys of rediscovering what makes us unique. When we do this, we’ll be able to accept our disease, and the changes that come when we find ourselves living with COPD.”
Hold on… Drop your shoulders, take a deep breath in through your nose… Close your eyes… Put your lips together and blow that air out longer than you breathed it in. Now step back… be still… and listen… Maybe it won’t be today, or even tomorrow, but you will find that the essence, the soul of you, is still there.
*At age 52 Jo-Von Tucker, a successful businesswoman living in New York City, was told she had COPD, that she would have to wear oxygen 24/7 for the rest of her life, and that she had just 2-5 years to live. Determined to beat the odds, she set out to learn all she could about COPD. She found very little, and what she did find was not much more than a death sentence. As a result, she made it her mission to do all she could to learn about COPD, then for the next 14 years she provided information, education, and support to people with COPD and their families. As she did, she found not only a new mission, but a pathway to rediscovering her best self.
