January 14, 2012

Snap, Crackle and Pop Goes Your Lungs


Once upon a time, in fact it was the day Brad Pitt was filming 'World War Z' in my fabulous home town, I had a bit of a cough. In fact I coughed and coughed and coughed some more. I was finding it a bit hard to breathe but being of the motor trade mentality, I put it down to my husband & his parents burning our garden shed in the back garden. I didn't really consider that anything was wrong at all, apart from maybe hypochondria, though something was catching my throat, something was making it difficult to breathe.

By the time it got to about 7pm I really wasn't any better at all. I had been coughing and wheezing like my old 1982 Ford Fiesta trying to get up a hill.

All night I coughed and coughed to the point where I had a headache, sore ribs, throat and a high temperature. I honestly thought I was going to cough my lungs up.

By the time I got to the doctor even she thought I was about to show her the inside of my lungs, by coughing them up onto her desk in a pile of soggy mucus laden villi. It was only then that we both realised I was having an asthma attack. Asthma eh? Who knew? Certainly not me anyway.

I now realise just how lucky I had been especially when I read the story of a 40 yr old woman from Birmingham.

This poor woman had asthma and had suffered a couple of days of chest pain and bad coughing much like me. During her examination at the hospital she had some cracking and popping noises from her right side.

After a further examination and an x-ray the doctors at Good Hope Hospital in Birmingham (I'm not going to make a joke about the hospital's name as its not really a challenge), they discovered that while coughing so hard, she had herniated her lung.

Ok, ok I know it's not the same as coughing your lungs up, but it is actually coughing your lungs out...... So I'm very nearly right.

So, between the ninth intercostal space the asthma sufferer had a bit of her lung. Now that in itself has a massive ick factor to say the least.

But what about the rare occasions when people have ruptured their spleen whilst coughing or even had an eyeball come out of its socket when puking or coughing like the grim reaper is holding your hand and wanting to take you on an adventure.

At this point I really should type some guff about how this is massively rare and coughing just clears crap out of your throat and if it goes on for too long then go to your doctor cause there could be an underlying problem, but, I'm not going to insult your intelligence.

I know that if you think you are losing your lungs via any which way you'd seek medical attention cause that's the sensible thing to do.

As for me, I've still got 2 lungs (I think) and apparently have asthma, which explains why I always thought I was massively unfit. In short, I wasn't, I just couldn't breathe.

Incidentally I've no idea what happened to the woman from Birmingham with the herniated lung, not sure I want to know how they shoved it back in between her ribs and muscles....

Apparently, they looked like this