If you're tired of being sob all the time, go to PR. If you actually exercise every day and push yourself, you will be sob while you're doing it, but you'll find that things that used to make you sob won't be as bad now. Increase your endurance and stamina, decrease the time you're sob. You are at a "use it or lose it" stage in your life. You can choose to sit on the couch and slowly circle the drain, knowing that you're going down, or you can choose to get up, push yourself a bit and watch your quality of life improve enormously. Your choice.....

Jean

Pulmonary rehab has kept me from having to have a lung transplant for the last two years and has saved my life. I started it after my first hospitalization for respiratory failure. My COPD is classified as "severe" or "end stage" depending on which doc is writing it. Rehab taught me how to breathe differently, how to use the O2 I have more efficiently, how to keep the panic at bay when my lungs seize up and quit moving any air and rehab has built up my strength and stamina. I never would have lived through the second respiratory failure without it. My lung function has gone from 25% down to 19% in the past 2 1/2 years, but now I can walk across the house without getting short of breath. Before rehab, I couldn't even make it to the bathroom in my room without resting. Even with the loss of lung capacity, I have almost tripled the length of my 6 minute walk and during my most recent one, I had to do the first two minutes without supplementary O2 because I kept my oxygen saturation level above 88%. I am still "too healthy" for a lung transplant and the transplant team in January told me to come back in 2016. Please go back to your doctor and say you want to try rehab. It will at minimum provide you with education about the disease and some breathing techniques that will help maximize your oxygen use.

A good pulmonary rehab program is a combination of exercise and education designed to teach you good exercise techniques, how to push yourself to do more and more physically and safely, how to gauge your own progress, to work out every day or at least 6 days a week, and to teach you about COPD and how to live better with it. Medicare will provide 36 life-time sessions. Many PR programs are six to eight weeks and may meet two or three times a week. One of the first things you need to learn is that you MUST exercise on your own at home for the other days.

As good PR program will have you doing some sort of aerobic exercise: walking, whether laps or on a treadmill; biking, elliptical, etc. The goal is for you to work up to being able to do 30 minutes of non-stop exercise....no breaks to catch you breath! You'll do upper body strengthening exercises and they should teach you about weight/resistance training for upper, lower and core muscle groups.

The education part of the program could include sessions on meds and how to take them, what they are for, how to tell whether they're working and what to do if they aren't; nutrition; exercise; O2 delivery systems and working with your O2 provider; tips and tricks for around the house; breathing techniques and when to use them; emotional and psychological aspects of chronic disease (depression and anxiety); talking with your family about COPD and lots of other topics.

If your doc is telling you he doesn't think it will do you any good, ask why. If it's because the program's no good, then talk with him about an exercise program at home. If he thinks you're COPD is too advanced, find a doc who's kept up with current best practice. There are tons of research studies that show the positive effects of a good PR program, and if he's not aware of that, you need a doc who is! They are beginning to do PR with patients in ICU with respiratory failure with good results, and you're up and walking around, so it can only help you.

Jean

I attend pulmonary rehab at the moment it is a 12 week course 2 days a week, so far I have done 6 lessons and it has taught me how to excercise at home just simple things like sitting and standing up without holding on to anything about 12 times I do that I also do press ups against my lounge wall 15 times I started with 10 and slowly increase as you go along and of course walking I use my shopping trolley to walk round the shopping mall just simple things but I always feel uplifted when I have done my exercise's I would encourage anyone to give it a go <3 babs

I love it. I go 3 times a week and work out on several things including a treadmill. The first time I didn't do so great. Today was the 4th visit and I have more than tripled what I did the first visit. Yes I get tired but I refuse to quit. It really gives me hope that my day to day life will improve.