Bikes vs. lung disease

COPD is another reason to get active

I just wanted to thank you for your story (“Feeling alive again,” April 8). I have just been diagnosed with COPD and it is so sad that doctors just tell you that you have COPD but do not offer anything else. I have started an exercise program, natural healing by researching and determination. I should have been on oxygen two years ago but I was not notified of my condition until two years after the X-ray showed my COPD. Two years of thinking I had asthma and allergy problems. I could have stopped my condition from worsening. Anyway, I ride a bike everyday and my daughter and I are entering a bikeathon in June in Michigan. I was researching bikeathons for the American Lung Association and ran across your article. I love the article and plan to post it on my refrigerator and in my bedroom. I, fortunately, am still able to work. I am a laborer and my job is strenuous. One doctor would not let me return to work for another two weeks because I was poisoned with a gas and it set me back. Funny though, they just want to pump you full of steroids and then not give you other options. Yoga is also a part of my daily routine. It works wonders. I would really love to learn how to educate people with COPD on all the medical and natural ways to make the disease more bearable. Also, smoking causes COPD but I have also worked in a coal plant and have been subjected to pollutants such as coal dust and fiberglass insulation. More should be done to protect people in certain industries. Just wanted to give you feedback. Thanks again for your story.

Janette Stevens

Dover, Tenn.

Federal budget

Wake up and smell the tea brewing

Don’t you just love the way this administration tosses numbers around?  Millions, billions, trillions and what next? They seem to live in a “la la land” of dreams. In reality, it’s a nightmare. Does the average American understand what all this means? I don’t think so, or they would be screaming about it. Finally, the Tea Party folks are and have been doing something about it — that means joining together to have their voices heard and electing people with common sense, or trying to at least.

Enough is enough. Hopefully our citizens with logical minds tucked under their hats might be able to turn things around in this country, but it will take hard work and dedication and electing “responsible” people on all levels of government. Those who really care about our country and our Constitution. I’ll take the Joe the Plumbers (who live in the “real” world) over the so-called educated (indoctrinated) elite any day.

We have been hoodwinked big time by the Democrats who have never met a tax they didn’t like. They also keep using the same old worn out “slogans” ad nauseam year after year (for the last 60 years that I have been voting) and one would think that the voting public would finally wise up. Maybe that is too much to expect? I hope not.

Norma L. Card

Bremerton