Staying Active with PH: Melanie Kozak

I was recently involved in a very interesting webinar called “Staying Active with PH.”  The participants were two nurses, another pulmonary hypertension patient and myself.  The nurses were extremely educational talking about pulmonary and cardiac rehab and how exercise can be beneficial (following discussion with your doctor and when done in a controlled setting).

For my part I decided to talk about things to do when you aren’t feeling well enough to exercise.  I do understand exercise is important when you can do it but here is my list of the things I enjoy doing to remain upbeat and active on my bad days.

• Spending time connecting with my PH friends online
• Playing games online
• Going to bingo Tuesday nights with my aunt
• Going out with friends to dinner, the movies or just hanging out (I make sure my friends know my limitations in advance!)
• Shopping whether it’s going out or shopping online
• Cooking and trying new recipes
• Spending time with my husband … can be playing video games, watching a movie at home or just talking
• Going out to eat
• Redecorating my house (okay so I just come up with the ideas and hubby does the work!)
• Traveling
• Scrapbooking my travels and friends/family
• Reading
• Volunteering for PHA:

-          Working on the PHA patient-to-patient support line

-          Running two support groups and starting a third support group

-          Attending other meetings in my area

-          Writing for the Generation Hope blog

-          Helping out with fundraisers for other PHers

-          Moderating Generation Hope in Action

-          Advocating for PH

-          Creating awareness through videos

-          Connecting with other young adults to help them become more active

 

These are just some of the things I do.  As you can see a lot of my time revolves around PHA!

So what do you do to stay physically active?   And what do you do on your bad days?