Learning From Others

 I have learned a lot talking with the other patients in the pulmonary rehab class. The most important lesson I learned was from a gentleman who, while I knew him, had horrible lungs, a heart attack and a broken hip. After each problem, he returned to our class. He and his wife were dog breeders and well respected dog show judges. Nationally and internationally.

He was the one who encouraged me to follow the process for future lung transplants. I was surprised to also learn that he was a gardener only he needed a golf cart and long-handled tools to continue his passion.

The biggest lesson I learned from him was to adjust my life for the disease in order to continue living my life to the fullest. Adjust and continue moving forward. Living well with a bad diagnosis.

Also in the rehab class, I have learned what NOT to become while living with a bad diagnosis. We had a woman who was a former Miss California but now well over 300 pounds living with an ILD. I soon learned to never, ever ask the benign question, "How are you?" If it slipped out, I was never prepared for a long literary of all of her physical problems and the reasons her doctors were doing everything wrong.

I never wanted to become a person who became the disease. A person able to talk about nothing else other than their disease. A person who talked about their disease all the time.

Instead, I wanted to learn about and accept the disease, adjust my life for the disease and to keep living each and every day. When someone asked me, "How are you?" I always replied, "Great!"

The downside of this is now beginning to show. All the relatives are not very clear about the difficulties we are now dealing with, how the disease has progressed to almost transplant levels and all about that process. As one of my relatives said, "Once you get lungs, you'll be cured!" Clueless because I have not wanted to burden all the details upon others. She is unaware transplants are a treatment not a cure.

Our son and my mom get it. They know what we are dealing with in our daily lives. We only talk about it when there is a problem. Life is too short to talk about it all the time. I really don't want to become the disease as I would rather live life to its fullest while I am able.

Once again, it's a choice.