COPD is awful ! Every day I watch this man struggle to breathe. Breathing is something you don't ever think about until you can't do it. We get headaches so we focus on our heads and hope we don't have a brain tumor, your heart races so we think it is about to explode. Aches and pains are warning signs for all our body parts but unless you have a persistent cough we seldom think about our lungs.
Seven and a half years ago when I first met The Man I had no idea what COPD was. I knew it had to do with breathing issues but beyond that I was oblivious to the complexities of this nasty disease. On our first date we meet for lunch after which I suggested a trip to one of the local oceanside parks. The Man was not familiar with Florida, his wife had died two years earlier so an old army buddy of his invited him to spend the winter with him in Florida. We met at a dinner party hosted by mutual friends of mine and The Man's friend John. The Man was not using oxygen at that time so I didn't know he was in the early stages of COPD. As we drove down to the ocean park The Man told me he had some breathing issues so he couldn't walk very far. No Problem! We parked the car and took the tram along the boardwalk to the ocean where we encountered stairs. This was my first realization that breathing isn't something that should be taken for granted.
Over our years together I have been educated in all the finer details of this miserable disease called COPD. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease is like an evil shadow that creeps up on you and slowly strangles you. Asthma, Emphysema, and Chronic bronchitis are all types of COPD. Each one is destroying the lungs in different ways. Emphysema is The Man's nemesis. It is a progressive destruction creating holes in the lungs. Not much fun ! No cure. So you make the best of what you have and keep going. The man has mastered this approach with style and dignity. We make slight adaptations to our daily lives, no eating in restaurants because it is just too complicated to drag oxygen around, whether it is a tank that will only last 2-3 hours or a concentrator that needs to be plugged in. Easier to just do drive through or stay home. Can't fly because you can't bring oxygen tanks onto airplanes and there is no where to plug in a machine. The concentrators do have auxiliary batteries but they only last about 2 hours and they weigh a ton. With all of these oxygen sources I get to be the pack horse carrying the batteries and wires in my back pack. Let me tell you how heavy they are !
I have mentioned in past blogs how our home is booby trapped with oxygen tubing. Like the disease the tubing has increased over the years. The Man has gone from no oxygen supplements to carrying a small portable battery powered machine that provided a burst of oxygen as needed. From there we went to a small electric concentrator that he could move around with him. Now we have moved up to a LARGE concentrator that sits in a room in the center of the house. The Man is attached to these concentrators by a hose. In the beginning it was a short hose. He would just need oxygen occasionally and could leave the hose and walk around without it. Now the hose is over 50 feet long because he wears it ALL the time. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Day and night. In the shower, sleeping, sitting . . . Not one step without it. I have learned to be VERY aware of where I am stepping. Not only can I step on the hose and cut off his oxygen supply but the hoses are made of plastic and are not that pliable. They get tangled and curled and caught under pieces of furniture. I have gotten my feet tangled in them a few times but have avoided any major catastrophe. The good thing about the tubing is I can always tell exactly where The Man is. If the hose is going out the door I know he must be outside. It's a warped version of Hansel and Gretel.
So now I have filled you in on the WHOLE story of the HOLES in The Man's lungs. But it doesn't end there.
For the past 2 weeks The Man has been struggling with his breathing. There are many factors that can cause this. An infection in his lungs, (which is quite common), allergies, a build up of fluids in his body which put pressure on his lungs causing less room for air, or possible heart issues. ( Did I mention that difficulty in breathing causes a strain on the heart so more often than not a patient with COPD will die of heart failure?) When The Man has a "flare up" we have to rule out all these possibilities. With this last episode, (which The Man failed to mention to me until it got really bad), we ran down all the possibilities and came up with nothing. He had decided that maybe we would have to go to the ER and have them check him out. But being a man this was the absolute last option. Y
esterday The Man decided to go out to ride around on his lawn mower. When he does that he has a tank of oxygen sitting in the small trailer attached to the lawn mower. He took off the house oxygen hose, put on the tank hose and said, "What the Hell ?" He noticed that the air flow from the tank was much stronger than the air flow from the concentrator. (Both were set at 3 liters which is what he now needs to function.) We immediately went into Sherlock Holmes mode to solve the mystery. The Man thought of everything . . . we checked the concentrator's filters . . . check! Checked the outlet . . . check! Checked the nose piece that delivers the oxygen into his nose . . . check! Checked the hose for kinks . . . check ! He finally decided to call the company that supplies the concentrator to see if they had a mechanic on call since it was now 5:30 on a Friday afternoon. The lovely young lady on the phone was so patient with The Man and his convoluted explanation of his problem, She went through all the possible problems and The Man assured her he had checked EVERYTHING.
EXCEPT . . . The girl suggested there may be a hole in the 50 foot hose that was delivering the oxygen from the concentrator. True to form The Man immediately said, "NO! That can't be!" My brain went the other direction and I got thinking about the hose and how we brought it from Florida, after using it there for 7 months and attached it to the MI concentrator back in MAY and have not changed it EVER ! When The Man goes outside the hose gets dragged across concrete and grass, it gets pinched in doors so it takes quite a beating. The possibility of a HOLE in the hose made complete sense to me. The girl on the phone suggested we go inside and connect his cannula directly to the concentrator, by-passing the hose entirely. Sure enough !!! The Man was breathing again ! The hose DID indeed have a hole in it somewhere along its 50 fool length so that the full flow of oxygen was diminished drastically.
Now we are breathing easy and I have told you the whole HOLE story.
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