6/21/07 - Longest day of the year (but they all feel LONG when you cant breathe)

When you struggle for every breath, every day feels like the longest day you've ever been through. It makes everything, even things that you wouldn't consider become a factor.

First, is the obvious shortness of breath (SOB) - this is the award winner of the signs and symptoms and the one that causes the chain effect of all the others, it ranges from mild inability to catch your breath to the feeling like someone sitting on your chest. It comes in gasps, it involves huge coughing fits, and combinations of wheezing and rattling in your chest from the mucous. From here we look into the non obvious symptoms of this exacerbation of COPD. (Mind you the horrible cough is particular to WTC COPD patients and has been called "WTC Cough")

Chest pains - when the SOB gets bad the chest pains come on. They are usually of the stabbing variety but can get entertainingly crushing, just enough so to have a middle aged guy freak that he thinks hes having "the big one". But SOB and chest pains kinda go hand in hand, were not so far out of the realm of head scratching yet.

Confusion - yes confusion accompanied by its sibling dizziness. When the SOB increases so do these lovely symptoms, the dizziness is more expected but the confusion is subtle and can last for hours after breathing treatments. Not all out wandering the halls naked confusion, but the sneaky "what did I come in here for?" confusion that you find happening over and over again. This can be from a multitude of causes, hypoxia (lack of oxygen) and forms of malnutrition that begin to occur rapidly after the onset of an exacerbation. Here's where people will start saying hmmmm. One of the dangerous symptoms is that my body burns 3x the amount of energy just to be able to breathe that a 'normals' persons body would burn. So if I'm not consuming 3x the normal calories, this is a cycle that in short order will lead to some form of nutrient deprivation.

Not far from nutrition is dehydration, which is also tied into the 3x the breathing rate problems. Every time you exhale, you breathe out oxygen, carbon dioxide and water vapors the latter being the end product of aerobic respiration even down to a cellular level. Problem is, when you are working much harder to exhale, your pumping out more water vapor with each passing breath. COPD is marked many times not by the inability to get air into the lungs, but rather by the inability to fully exhale what you have taken in; this creates a back-up situation that leads to various methods of forced exhalations.

Low grade fevers are a favorite of mine and are usually the reward for laboring to breathe all day long, they happen in the late afternoons and evenings and put that nice total body shitty feeling into the equation.

So here I am on the official longest day of the year, experiencing all of the above, looking at the clock - exhausted.......praying for this day to end.

6/18/07 - A few days of hospital stay, just what the doctor ordered (yah rite!)

So as the title says, nothing like a few days in the hospital to scare the crap out of you - and more importantly......... to remind me that whenever I think Ive got this whole lung thing figured out - wham! Welcome back to earth. As of about a week ago, in the evening, my lungs just decided to take a vacation. No one can track down why. Make no mistake, this is not from a lack of trying - as it seems people need to be able to pin these things down into neat and tidy boxes; or else they start turning on you.

Yes, once the 'usual's have been discarded - we have arrived at; "well you must have done something you weren't supposed to be doing!" And I don't wish to relay that I'm not curious as to why this happened - but it may be that I've just had a lot more time with this in my head ruminating around to accept the fact that the 'C' in COPD, stands for chronic and that by definition means that this will continue to bite me in the ass at not only predictable - but odd intervals as well. So here I sit, first day back home in a while; short of breath, confused and I felt the need for an update.........this fuckin' sucks.

And if the timing could be of the 'cant get any worse variety' - this weekend was supposed to be the weekend where we, as a charity and community were supposed to be able to go and see the new Michael Moore movie - SICKO. Do the red carpet thing, get to get some media attention on the plight and the charity, and now if I want to see this thing, it'll cost me $10.50 - just like everyone else. Great. Now I could probably launch here into a LONG diatribe about me feelings regarding Mr. Moore and his movie making styles - but.........as he has offered to help to us as ill first responders in this plight - I shall reserve judgement. So for those hoping to read something scathing about him here, you'll just have to wait, as will we all, to see if this movie that highlights at least 3 ill 9/11 first responders who receive free medical treatment in Cuba - can get the attention of a blissfully ignorant nation. If he can accomplish that, then I may very well become one of his biggest fans for saving all of my friends lives.

Otherwise, here I am - a bit battered and run down, certainly humbled by the last week - hoping like hell that whatever set this off; chooses to do it few and far between.