"I'm a lucky man whenever I wake up in the morning and I'm not breathless. When that happens, I stay in bed for a while to enjoy it. But only until I need to go to the toilet. That's where the trouble starts, where the first breathlessness starts. After I'm finished, I come back to the bedroom and take oxygen for about 10 minutes."
"I'm not afraid of anything, except for suffocation. I've experienced the beginning of suffocation twice, and I really don't want that to be my ending!"
"In summer he can go out and sit in the garden for a bit, but in winter, it's mostly indoors."
"After the laundry was done, I used to hang it up immediately. I just put everything on the ground, and I had to bend over a lot. Now, I put the laundry basket on top of something else so I don't have to bend over so much."
"I would like to be able to go to the shopping mall, but that takes so much energy, so much energy, that it would have to be really necessary. Otherwise, I don't go there."
"We used to go walking a lot. We just can't do it anymore because after about 100 metres I get out of breath. So, we don't do it anymore. There's no joy in that anymore."
"It just goes so slowly. We don't really notice but other people do. They see that he can no longer do things that he could a year ago. For us it's just normal."
"It's hard to explain. Sometimes, I am working in the garden without any problems. After a while, I come into the house and boom, it's over. Suddenly I'm exhausted, I can't do anything. That's hard to explain. She [my wife] sometimes doesn't understand. But I don't even understand! Because one moment, I'm working and the next, I can't do anything anymore. It's hard to explain because you can't see any difference, I still look the same."
"I make calculations. Before, my lung function was 35%, and 2 years later it was 5% less. So, I calculate a loss of 5% every 2 years. That means that after 4 or 5 years, grandpa will be gone."
Topic: Severe COPD patient interviews (Read 1924 times)
