My Son, My Coach
Wilsonville, Oregon
MY HUSBAND, JIM, ADDED AN other pill to the pile of meds on the kitchen counter. Ever since my release from the hospital two days earlier, he’d kept careful track of which ones I needed to take and when. It was overwhelming, everything I would need to do to recover. And most of it was on me. It’s not as if Jim or anyone else could breathe for me. This is hopeless, I thought. I’m never going to be able to do this.
Just then, my youngest son, Jeremey, walked into our apartment. “What did the doctor say?” he asked. Jim had taken me to a follow-up pulmonologist appointment earlier that morning.
“He wants me to go to pulmonary rehabilitation,” I said, trying to sound more positive than I felt. “It meets two or three times a week about managing COPD, learning to monitor and better control breathing, managing stress and exercising. It sounds great, but with your dad out of
