Life after diagnosis - health & haemoptysis
I left school in 1996, worked for a year while living at home - during which time I cycled to work daily (about an hour a day total) on my old clunky mountain bike. I joined a Tae Kwon Do club and started to train with them twice a week.
I had been hooked on rock climbing since I was 14, and carried on doing this at the local wall and weekends away with friends.
I went inter railing with a good mate from school at the end of 1997, travelling to Eastern & Western Europe, and then started at Bangor University in Sept 1997.
At Uni I discovered mountaineering. Snowdonia led to Scotland in winter, which led to trips to the French Alps. I climbed up to 4000m during this time, at no point feeling any significant difference in my physical ability to that of my peers, in fact I seemed to acclimatise well to altitude pretty quickly.
I started white water kayaking and mountain biking, and generally led a very active life.
During my time at university, I suffered my first episode of haemoptysis - coughing up blood. This was something that was to occur a few more times in my life. The situation was always when I was lying horizontal, often under pressure. In this first incident, it occured just after having sex, which was pretty distressing for both of us as you can imagine! I felt a rattling in my chest when I breathed out, and I went to the bathroom to cough up something, only to spit out a bright red patch of blood. Even I could see this was probably worth a trip to the hospital, so we drove up there, and spent the night having tests done while my friends all turned up pretty concerned. Scared the crap out of my poor parents, my Mum insisting on coming up to visit after I came out of hospital. The bleeding had resolved overnight, and no further problems could be found so I was discharged, a bit confused.
This haemoptysis occurred a few more times. Always when I was in a position of straining under some type of pressure or lying down. It never occurred when doing aerobic activity, e.g. running, cycling, walking, only when holding my breath and exerting myself.
The other occasions were changing a car tyre at home (knelt down struggling to get a wheelnut undone). Snorkling and swimming - even when not diving at all, just the act of holding my breath for periods of time while swimming hard seemed to bring it on, but to a much lesser degree. And a couple more times in the arena of the bedroom. The last time I remember it happening would be in 2001 - outlined below. Until then, most episodes were very minimal amounts of blood and resolved within an hour or so.
I left Uni in 2000, worked around Snowdonia for a while gaining outdoor qualifications, and then tried to make something of my Marine Biology degree by volunteering with Shoals of Capricorn - a Royal Geographical Society project in the Indian Ocean.
My heart issues had led to my cardiologist, quite sensibly, advising me that scuba diving would be unwise given the extra pressure potentially placed on the heart, so officially that was out. I did however convince a friend to take me down to only 5m, which I did with no problems.
My work and leisure time involved a lot of snorkelling and free diving, down to 10m or more. Most of the time this was fine, but I remember a few occasions where I was not!
One day we were returning in the boat from sampling out on the reef, and the anchor had become snagged. I swam down about 8m to free it - which took some tugging and pulling, but it came free. As soon as I returned to the surface I could tell something was not right. I felt the tell tale frothy crackles in my chest, and as I took a deep breath and coughed, I spat a dark red, frothy blood into the water.
No one had noticed this and I climbed on board giving a thumbs up, and stayed near the back of the boat. I kept coughing up the blood, and spitting it over the side, keeping sure to avoid being seen.
When we got back to the office I made my excuses and headed home, spending the rest of the evening propped up on pillows in my bed, listening to the rattle as I breathed deeply. I was annoyed and scared, but had experience this enough now to know it would resolve by morning.
As I said earlier, there have been no real answers to why this has happened from my Docs - but a PET scan in 2012 of my aorta also showed some evidence of scarring in one of my lung lobes, which indicates there may have been some damage there at some point. Quite why this would have happened exactly how, I don't think I will ever know.
I have not had an incidence of haemoptysis since the early 2000s, through a combination of avoiding some of the activities that brought it on (snorkling & diving down) but I have swum and enjoyed other activities since then without problems, so exactly why it has improved I couldn't say.
I had been hooked on rock climbing since I was 14, and carried on doing this at the local wall and weekends away with friends.
I went inter railing with a good mate from school at the end of 1997, travelling to Eastern & Western Europe, and then started at Bangor University in Sept 1997.
At Uni I discovered mountaineering. Snowdonia led to Scotland in winter, which led to trips to the French Alps. I climbed up to 4000m during this time, at no point feeling any significant difference in my physical ability to that of my peers, in fact I seemed to acclimatise well to altitude pretty quickly.
I started white water kayaking and mountain biking, and generally led a very active life.
During my time at university, I suffered my first episode of haemoptysis - coughing up blood. This was something that was to occur a few more times in my life. The situation was always when I was lying horizontal, often under pressure. In this first incident, it occured just after having sex, which was pretty distressing for both of us as you can imagine! I felt a rattling in my chest when I breathed out, and I went to the bathroom to cough up something, only to spit out a bright red patch of blood. Even I could see this was probably worth a trip to the hospital, so we drove up there, and spent the night having tests done while my friends all turned up pretty concerned. Scared the crap out of my poor parents, my Mum insisting on coming up to visit after I came out of hospital. The bleeding had resolved overnight, and no further problems could be found so I was discharged, a bit confused.
This haemoptysis occurred a few more times. Always when I was in a position of straining under some type of pressure or lying down. It never occurred when doing aerobic activity, e.g. running, cycling, walking, only when holding my breath and exerting myself.
The other occasions were changing a car tyre at home (knelt down struggling to get a wheelnut undone). Snorkling and swimming - even when not diving at all, just the act of holding my breath for periods of time while swimming hard seemed to bring it on, but to a much lesser degree. And a couple more times in the arena of the bedroom. The last time I remember it happening would be in 2001 - outlined below. Until then, most episodes were very minimal amounts of blood and resolved within an hour or so.
I left Uni in 2000, worked around Snowdonia for a while gaining outdoor qualifications, and then tried to make something of my Marine Biology degree by volunteering with Shoals of Capricorn - a Royal Geographical Society project in the Indian Ocean.
My heart issues had led to my cardiologist, quite sensibly, advising me that scuba diving would be unwise given the extra pressure potentially placed on the heart, so officially that was out. I did however convince a friend to take me down to only 5m, which I did with no problems.
One day we were returning in the boat from sampling out on the reef, and the anchor had become snagged. I swam down about 8m to free it - which took some tugging and pulling, but it came free. As soon as I returned to the surface I could tell something was not right. I felt the tell tale frothy crackles in my chest, and as I took a deep breath and coughed, I spat a dark red, frothy blood into the water.
No one had noticed this and I climbed on board giving a thumbs up, and stayed near the back of the boat. I kept coughing up the blood, and spitting it over the side, keeping sure to avoid being seen.
When we got back to the office I made my excuses and headed home, spending the rest of the evening propped up on pillows in my bed, listening to the rattle as I breathed deeply. I was annoyed and scared, but had experience this enough now to know it would resolve by morning.
As I said earlier, there have been no real answers to why this has happened from my Docs - but a PET scan in 2012 of my aorta also showed some evidence of scarring in one of my lung lobes, which indicates there may have been some damage there at some point. Quite why this would have happened exactly how, I don't think I will ever know.
I have not had an incidence of haemoptysis since the early 2000s, through a combination of avoiding some of the activities that brought it on (snorkling & diving down) but I have swum and enjoyed other activities since then without problems, so exactly why it has improved I couldn't say.
Comments
Post a Comment