Welcome.

My name is Ofer.

If you've found your way here, there's a good chance that COPD, lung transplantation, chronic illness, or caring for someone you love has become part of your life.

I wish we had met under better circumstances.

A few years ago, my life looked fairly ordinary. I had spent decades building a career, raising a family, traveling whenever I could, and making plans without giving much thought to something as basic as breathing.

Like many smokers, I assumed serious lung disease happened to other people.

Eventually, my lungs disagreed.

When I was diagnosed with COPD, my lung function was already down to about 49 percent. At the time, I didn't really understand what that number meant. I could still work. I could still travel. I could still convince myself that life was more or less under control.

COPD doesn't usually arrive with a dramatic announcement.

It behaves like a very polite thief.

It steals a little today.

A little more next year.

Until one day you realize you've started planning your life around the nearest bench.

The decline was slow, but relentless.

Stairs became projects.

Walking required planning.

A shower became an activity that deserved recovery time.

Eventually my lung function dropped to around 20 percent.

That is where life changes completely.

Breathing is no longer automatic.

It becomes your main occupation.

Oxygen entered my life soon afterward.

At first I hated it.

Not because it was uncomfortable, but because it felt like surrender. Walking into a restaurant with an oxygen concentrator attracts attention, whether you want it or not.

Later I understood something important.

The oxygen wasn't the problem.

The disease was.

The machine was simply helping me stay in the game.

As my condition continued to deteriorate, the conversation shifted toward lung transplantation.

People often imagine that deciding on a transplant is easy.

It isn't.

A transplant is not a cure.

It is an agreement.

You exchange one difficult life for another that hopefully offers more possibilities.

You trade COPD for immunosuppressants.

Oxygen tubing for medication schedules.

One set of risks for another.

After a great deal of thought, conversations, research, and more than a little fear, I decided to move forward.

In September 2023, I received a double lung transplant.

The first breath is impossible to explain.

Not because it is dramatic.

Because it isn't.

The air simply arrives.

No negotiation.

No planning.

No effort.

Healthy people never notice that feeling.

Someone who has spent years fighting for every breath never forgets it.

For a while, everything felt almost unreal.

My lung function eventually reached 117 percent.

After years of watching numbers fall, seeing one that high felt like somebody else's test result.

Of course, life has a sense of humor.

The honeymoon didn't last forever.

There were infections.

Complications.

Hospital admissions.

More medications.

More lessons in humility.

Today my lung function is no longer anywhere near that extraordinary peak.

And that's okay.

Transplantation was never the finish line.

It was the opportunity to keep living.

That's why this blog exists.

Not to teach medicine.

Not to offer miracle solutions.

And certainly not to pretend that positive thinking fixes damaged lungs.

I'm simply documenting what this journey actually feels like.

The fear.

The setbacks.

The unexpected victories.

The science that helped me understand what was happening.

The mistakes I made.

The things I wish someone had told me years earlier.

If you're living with COPD, waiting for a transplant, recovering from one, or standing beside someone who is, I hope you'll find something useful here.

Sometimes information.

Sometimes reassurance.

Sometimes just the comforting realization that what you're feeling is normal.

And if we can laugh occasionally at the absurd bureaucracy of chronic illness, even better.

One thing I've learned is that serious illness strips away many illusions.

It also makes ordinary moments surprisingly valuable.

A good walk.

A quiet cup of coffee.

Playing football with my grandchildren.

Flying one of them like an airplane through the living room without running out of breath.

Those things used to be ordinary.

Now they feel like privileges.

So welcome.

I'm glad you're here.

I only wish none of us needed a place like this.