Respiratory Illnesses - a personal viewpoint

FtM doctor wrote on July 24 about why he hates working in Respiratory, the crux of it being that :-

“the sad thing about respiratory illness- it really does kill people in a way that’s very depressing for the Doctors.

You come into hospital with COPD/Bronchietasis/complications of lung cancer you get better - you get to know people they get to know you. You go to intensive care a couple of times. You get better. And then you come in, nothing seems any different but this time you don’t get better. And then you die. Of course their are variations on the theme -lung cancer which is diagnosed in a late stage - where you just die or pneumonia - where you do get better. Mostly. Or not.
Oh and the illness are pretty much all caused by smoking - an entire ward full of people dying totally needless deaths. The fact that smoking is the cause of this misery is the big elephant in the Ward. The patients know it was - we know it was - the fact is that it’s pointless telling them again - most of them asked when you first mention the diagnosis - by the time they’re hospitalized most of them have given up, smoking that is.”

I started smoking when I was 18 for all the usual silly reasons, mainly that it seemed grown-up and the smokers at work seemed to be much more fun than the non-smokers. At age 21 I developed asthma, blaming it on a combination of a new marriage, an even newer pregnancy and moving from the city to isolation in the country, also to the fact that I had to sweep the carpets using a dustpan and brush as we were too poor to afford a vacuum or a carpet sweeper.

I remember my GP sitting on the side of my bed administering IV adrenaline (gulp) very slowly and with his fingers on my pulse all the time waiting for my breathing to settle. This happened quite a lot until oral steroids came along and I seemed to be constantly on varying doses of that for at least 10 years until a move to a new area and a new GP saw me weaned off it (apart from flare-ups) using Librium.

Of course, I was still a smoker although I tried to give up quite seriously on more than one occasion. As is usual I also had a number of chest infections – which usually led to flares up of asthma. Then at 40 I tried really hard and ended up in hospital with the worst attack of asthma ever, involving a stay in intensive care. Of course, what did I do but start smoking again? I was afraid of stopping and also reckoned that so much damage was done it was not worth the struggle.

Matters then followed the usual course, with more and more frequent hospital admissions until on my 60th birthday I “celebrated” by being admitted to ICU with pneumonia requiring ventilating and a tracheostomy after 5 days.

Of course this time I stopped smoking – but only for 10 months.

Then once more I entered a period of more and more frequent hospital admissions until I realised that I was not far short of dying – and prepared myself for it, until one consultant really lost his temper with me over my smoking and told me that I MUST stop. He scared me into doing just that, although it took hypnotherapy and a great deal of support from my GP (and Prozac for a while) to get through it. I now recognise that I am an addict and can never have even ‘just the one’. It is 4 years since my last cigarette and, even at my age, I find it incredible how much better my respiratory function is. Pity I had not realised that at 40!

Let this be a terrible warning, and also an encouragement that it is never to late to quit.