I do chair exercises. You can find them on Youtube. Also there are a couple of videos there that are pulmonary rehab. You do what you can do.

Mrs.Yates, here's the thing about this disease. You have an FEV1 that's expressed both as liters blown and as a percentage of what you blew compared to a normal person (that's the percentage). What can definitely be stabilized is the percentage. Mine's been stable for 20 years at about 35%. However, that liter amount does go down every year for you and at the same rate it goes down for the person with no lung disease to whom you're compared. So you stay stable relative to the normal person, but in reality the amount you can blow out does go down every year, so the absolute value of what you can blow out goes down. Eventually 35% of normal gets to the point where the differences between what I could do 20 years ago and now are fairly significant.

That said, I still have a very good quality of life, I travel and work as I want, advocate for people with COPD, play with my grandchildren and my friends. You can too, but it takes some work. The best thing you can do is get into a Pulmonary Rehab program and start exercising hard to get the lung function you have left as efficient as possible. That will make a big difference.

You have asthma and we know that people who have asthma as adults often have COPD as well.

When you cannot breathe well your oxygen doesn't get in the bloodstream as well. Any of the lung diseases can affect your oxygen level. That is why when you go to your Dr. they check your oxygen concentration with the thing that they put on your finger.

I don’t know where to begin!

How can you exercise when you can’t breath?