New to this. Hi.
Here for my dad, 78 years olds, stage 4 COPD. I've been doing a lot of research on COPD over the last week and found this site.
A couple months ago he could walk very short distances and he wasn’t using his portable oxygen (he refused to). My mom passed about a month ago and his condition declined pretty rapidly after she passed. He said he was having difficulty showering, shaving, brushing his teeth, etc. He started using his oxygen but even with oxygen he was struggling.
He was admitted to the hospital a couple weeks ago, for two days, convinced the doctor to let him leave. Then he went back the following day for a week. His pulmonary doctor referred him to hospice care.
So that’s where we are at now. He is in a nursing home, 24 hour care, on hospice. He weighs roughly 70-75lbs at 5’11’’ (he’s been underweight for quite some time, but has lost more weight) with no muscle mass. His FEV1 was at 28% last summer, not sure what it is now but a doctor at the hospital said it is much lower. He’s barrel chested, incontinent, feet are always swollen and constantly air hungry at 5L. I’ve noticed that 5L isn’t seen as a lot. Is that true? And if he’s constantly air hungry at 5L should he be on something higher? Not sure how it works.
His whole world has been turned upside and he’s not coping well with it (understandably). He’s in denial of how serious his condition is. He says he’s feeling better, improvements from the day before but it looks (and sounds) like he’s just getting worse. He takes more rests, may say a couple of sentences then has to catch his breath for a couple minutes or can’t talk at all. Any activity, like being lifted and placed into bed from his wheelchair, just wipes him out completely.
Is this it? Is this where it just keeps going further and further downhill? Or will he stay at this new baseline for a while? I’ve read that some patients with stage 4 go through a major decline, plateau, improve slightly than are at a new baseline and rise repeat. It just all happened so fast.