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When it’s COPD
For people who have COPD (emphysema, chronic bronchitis, or both), people with a cough that won’t go away or who get winded easily, and the people beside them. This page passes on, by name, what the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), Medicare.gov and the American Lung Association say: when a flare-up is a 911 call, how COPD is found, the kinds of medicine and getting the inhaler right, pulmonary rehabilitation and oxygen and what Medicare pays, making the days easier, and quitting smoking. It builds the questions to ask at a visit. Take only what you need today.
Right now
- Call 911 if you are having a hard time catching your breath or talking, your lips or fingernails have turned blue or gray, people around you notice you are not mentally alert, your heartbeat is very fast, or the recommended treatment for your symptoms is not working. Those are NHLBI’s signs. If you can’t call, it says family or friends should.
- Symptoms suddenly worse, or a fever? NHLBI says to call your healthcare provider right away.
- A question for a nurse or respiratory therapist? The American Lung Association’s free Lung HelpLine: 1-800-586-4872, press 2. It says it has Spanish-speaking staff. We did not find its hours.
- Thinking about ending your life? Call or text 988, at any hour.
More help
- Quitting: When you want to quit smoking.
- It may be asthma, or both: When it’s hard to breathe.
- Keeping track: My medicines, Symptom diary and My emergency card.
- Before a visit: Get ready for your appointment.
- No insurance, or a bill you can’t pay: When you need a doctor and can’t pay and When a medical bill is too much.
- Can’t work the way you did: Ask for what helps you work and Applying for disability benefits.
- Short of breath and frightened: Breathe and ground is a calming tool, not a treatment for COPD.
- Looking after someone: When you’re caring for someone.
- All our free tools.
Other guides on this site that go with this page
Free to read. We chose these ourselves; no professional did. Each guide was written with AI and has not been reviewed by a professional. They are general information, not advice.
- Help as you get older: one number that finds help near you, staying in your own home, help paying for Medicare, and scams.
- When someone you love is dying: someone who is dying: hospice and palliative care, what Medicare pays for, keeping them comfortable, what you may see near the end, and what to say.
- When pain doesn’t go away: pain that has lasted for months: describing it so a doctor hears it, treatments that are not medicine, and what pain does to sleep and mood.
This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, nurse, respiratory therapist or person living with COPD has reviewed it. The facts were read on October 7, 2026 on the websites of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (nhlbi.nih.gov: its COPD pages on what it is, symptoms, diagnosis, causes and risk factors, prevention, treatment, living with it, and women and COPD, and its pulmonary rehabilitation page), Medicare.gov (its pages on pulmonary rehabilitation programs and on oxygen equipment and accessories) and the American Lung Association (its Lung HelpLine page). The page says whose words it is passing on, and what is marked “ours” is our own. What we could not open or did not read: NHLBI’s separate page on oxygen therapy (it was not found, so the oxygen lines come from its COPD treatment page), anything on Medicaid, private insurance or Medicare Advantage, inhaler prices, and any state’s programs. Medicare’s rules and amounts change: check them before you count on them. We called no number. It saves nothing and loads no tracking.