An exacerbation is a worsening of your typical COPD symptoms that requires medical intervention (additional meds, antibiotics, prednisone, hospitalization: any or all of these) to get rid of it. If you're typically short of breath, an increase in being short of breath could be a sign of an exacerbation. Very often, there are signals, so you need to learn to recognize them. Exacerbations, particularly bad ones where you are hospitalized or in ICU, can often do additional damage to your lungs you can't recover from.

This happened to me this week