Death by Inhalation

[thisnewday]

Finally went to the doc today re the lungs. It's been 1-1/2 to 2 weeks since the wheezing has gotten really bad. I guess what made me do it was feeling like I was having a heart attack on the treadmill. Or maybe it was not being able to lie on my back for p/t exercises without feeling like I was gonna hack up a lung. Or the incredible fatigue after doing, well, anything. Or nothing.

The test for lung capacity is done in this thing that looks, no sh*t, like the Smart Car, doors and all. Once inside, once you're completely at their mercy - and they know, and you know, that there's no escape - you're instructed to put this rather large tube in your mouth and, in rapid succession, draw in the deepest breath you can, expel every last freaking, gasping, sputtering, coughing-your-lungs-out milliliter of it, and then, if you're not slumped lifelessly in the driver's seat, draw in another.

Then you get a treatment with a bronchiodilator (a drug that relaxes the airways) and do it all over again. Both attempts at death by inhalation are graphed by computer and printed out. The results indicated that I'd lost 30% of the lung capacity I had when last tested. Not good.

All of which puts me precisely where I didn't want to be: dependent on a potentially life-long regimen of drug therapies which bring their own considerable risks while hopefully alleviating others. So, once again, the choices narrow. Except that this time it's, as they say, "a matter of life and breath."

Comments

[amandagayle.livejournal.com]

ugh.