I have Interstitial lung disease. Coughing and S.O.B upon exertion.

If you can and your doctor has not told you otherwise, do what you can to move, i.e. bike, walk, do steps, anything aerobic within your abilities that also gets you coughing up the mucus. The mucus sitting in your lungs could be damaging you more— getting it out is important, at least it was for me. My doctors have told me that my exercise has kept the disease from damaging me more than it would have if I did not exercise. I asked them why no one ever told me to exercise and they said they stopped doing it because no one listened.

I have been truly blessed during this entire journey. I did some pre-prep so that when the call came I had done what I could to set the Mayo Team up for success. This sped up the pre-surgery prep which got me in to Surgery quicker. I was told my surgery went very well, due to my recovery from the anesthesia, and high pain threshold, I was only in the ICU for a day and a half. I was able to begin walking very quickly, and my incision healed very quickly.I have always been blessed with healing from cuts. I followed the medical teams instructions completely, and documented it on the White Board in my room. I honestly didn’t have much pain, which surprised the Surgeon, Doctors, and Nurses. I have been blessed that my natural lung has maintained, while my new lung has expanded to fill my chest cavity faster than the team expected. I had also done Pre-Physical Therapy prior to getting the call for my transplant which helped immensely. An example would be I had done “Sit to Stand” exercises in Pre-Hab and when The Physical Therapist did a timed 10 repetition test I did 2 of them and matched the record for this exercise. Hope this helps.

Thanks. Yes this info is helpful. I had read horror stories about lung transplants requiring weeks in a medically-induced coma followed by months of very light strength building.
I am recently getting over 55 days in hospital, followed by 24 days in physical rehab after a severe flare of my ILD.
I am now in a pulmonary rehab program which I feel is helping me a lot. Besides muscle strength building I am now able to walk a mile or close to it each day. That's not without breaks. I do have to stop for rests, but still, I am happy with my progress so far.
When I see the respirologist in a couple of weeks we will discuss my having a transplant. I am more in favor of it now, knowing that the procedure and the recovery process is not as long as I had feared.
I was in good health before the ILD flare and apart from my lungs I think I am in not bad health now so the recovery that you have described doesn't scare me off.
Thanks again.

Not sure if you already have the biopsy. I'm new here. I got a bronchoscopy done and several tests during this, including 7 biopsies. I was diagnosed with sarcodoisis of lungs and lymph nodes. I'm sick of and on.