a s k n a e d tr p e o u g s h h T Emma Ferguson lives in Northern Ireland and was diagnosed with idiopathic PAH at the age of 16. The English Literature graduate enjoys writing about different aspects of life with pulmonary hypertension, and here, she explains how she makes exercise work for her.
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his week, and really this month, I’ve been exhausted. For me, PH exhaustion has a creeping feeling. It starts with a cold or a particularly tiring few days. The longer the days, the deeper it sets in – so that it’s going to require more and more rest to get rid of it. So often things don’t stop soon enough. Pressure to meet deadlines and outside forces means that other things slide in their place, usually things in my personal life; pleasures like reading or meeting friends. Work-life balance is difficult at the best of times, but when unpredictable health is added to the mix, prioritisation becomes even harder but also even more essential. Another thing that gets pushed aside when I’m getting exhausted is exercise, although unlike my other examples, exercise has never really constituted ‘pleasure’ for me. When I was at primary school (and undiagnosed) I was simply the sickly kid who couldn’t do sports and was regularly
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off school. By secondary school, aside from mandatory PE classes, I’d written off regular exercise entirely. The Duke of Edinburgh’s (DofE) Award was eye opening for me. An enlightened attitude to participation espoused by the DofE charity meant that I was able to avoid the heavy rucksack-wearing, incline-walking expeditions mostly associated with the award – and instead travel in a canoe. This required a lot of additional training for safety, but it was something that I could do. Over the course of four years, I completed my bronze, silver and gold awards in a sport that allowed me
to keep up with my peers. The upper body and core strength required to manoeuvre the canoe was something I was able to build up without becoming too breathless. Completing DofE still relied upon me being relatively well before I set out, but the actual exertion was manageable. By the time I was at university, walking had become my best friend. We all know the advice about PH and exercise; walking is perfect for people with PH and ideally, we should walk while breathless so long as we can maintain a conversation. Walking everywhere to save money improved my fitness like nothing else. I walked
“Exercise and I will never be best friends, as we don’t meet regularly enough”
