What is COPD?

Welcome and thank you for joining me on my trip along the LVRS road.. My name is Penny; I am from the beautiful Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania ....and I have emphysema. Hmmm, sort of sounds like the introduction at an AA meeting, doesn’t it?

If you have any questions about COPD or LVRS, please, ask. It's only through my asking questions of Cathy-MD, Chris, Bec-Saba, Wes and many others that I finally got brave enough to at least test.

Before we get too far into this journey, I’d like to explain some of the abbreviations and terms you might find on these pages.
COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease This “umbrella term” includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Some doctors also include chronic asthma in this category. There may be other lung diseases also under the COPD umbrella but those are the 3 most common.
LVRS - Lung Volume Reduction Surgery - In this procedure, the surgeon removes bad parts of the lung (preferably in the upper lobes) so the good sections have room to expand and work better.
PCP - Primary care (family) physician
Pulmonary Doctor - Specializes in diseases of the lung.
U of P - Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
PFT - Pulmonary Function Test - This is a painless breathing test usually done in a hospital setting ('cause that's where the machines are). You are seated and you do various breathing exercises into a tube connected to a machine that records various numbers that will help the doctors evaluate how well the lungs are working and what components of COPD a person might have. Some testing areas have you sit in a plexiglass "phone booth" while you do these tests. You can see out to the right, left and front so there's really no "claustrophobic" feeling.
SOB - Short of breath; shortness of breath.

All right, on to my story.