You Can Write About COPD if You Want

I never planned on being a COPD writer. I never planned on being a COPD advocate.

It was not even a distant thought when I graduated high school. It was not even a distant thought when I graduated college for the third time in 1997. It was not even a distant thought when I started my blog in 2007.

Yet, here I am writing another article for this community.

My writing journey

I have always loved writing.

I had poorly controlled asthma as a kid. This was back in the 1970s and 1980s.

It was poorly controlled because many medicines we have today weren’t around yet. So, while my dad and brothers went out to hunting camp, I stayed home.

I spent a lot of time in my room. I was a thinker. I started a journal so I could write down my thoughts.

I would journal about pretty much anything. I would talk about something I experienced.

Then I would follow this with my thoughts on that topic. I also was an avid reader, and so I learned somewhere along the way that writing is good therapy.

It helps you to organize your thoughts. It helps you to make sense of this or that. This includes my asthma-related thoughts.

Regardless of how I started, I always felt great when I finished a good journal entry. It just makes you feel good. The only downside to journaling was knowing I had no audience but myself.

This changed in 2008. That was the year I started blogging.

It gives you a sense of accomplishment. It even made me feel better about being unable to do things others can.

Today, a sense of joy rushes through my veins when I finish writing an article like this or when I get to the point it’s going to be good enough to submit.

Writing about COPD

I created my blog, and I blogged every day. I started writing about my job as a respiratory therapist.

But I then started writing about my asthma on my blog. Then, I started writing about my experiences with my COPD patients, many of whom became good friends.

This is how the good folks in this community discovered me. Here I am, seven years later, still blogging in this community. I got here simply by doing something I enjoyed doing: writing.

You can be a writer too if you want!

I started as a respiratory therapist in 1997. On my first day, I met a lady with COPD.

She was on a BiPAP machine most of the time and I spent a lot of time with her. Honestly, she was the first COPD patient I became friends with while working as an RT.

One day she said to me: “I wish there were something I could do to help other people with COPD. I have all this COPD wisdom, and I just wish there was a way I could help others.”

At that time, I had no clue what to tell her. I mean, this was before I bought my first computer.

It was before I was aware of the powers of the Internet. Now, all these years later, I have thought of a good response for her.

I would say, “You could be a writer. You could be a blogger. You could be a COPD advocate. Or, share your story" by clicking on the link."

The benefits of writing about COPD

Other than what I noted above, there are so many advantages of writing:

• It’s free
• It’s easy
• You can share what it is like to live with COPD
• You can help others to realize that they are not alone in living with COPD
• You can share your tips on how best to cope or deal with COPD
• You can help someone else feel less lonely
• You can help those who do not have COPD know what it is like, thereby increasing their understanding and ability to have empathy for others who are living with it.
• You can be a COPD advocate, which means you do all of the above.

If you want to write, you need a tablet and a pen. Or, if you want to write here, all you need is an electronic device with a keyboard. Thanks to modern technology, we have plenty of these devices available.