When I'm 'Running on Empty' in My Life With Lung Disease

If your heart is your body’s engine, then your lungs are most certainly your gas tank.

When your lungs are working perfectly, you have a full tank. You’re able to breathe in and out without any issues.

But when you have a lung disease, or if you’re like me, three lung diseases, then you can feel more like you’re running on a low tank. Running on empty, as the saying goes.

You push yourself to go that extra step. You cough up some phlegm or take a large puff of your inhaler, almost as if you were revving the pedal to get that last little bit out.

I’ve had asthma since childhood. I’ve nearly died from asthma attacks two or three times. But I learnedd to cope. I knew, or thought I knew, how to deal with my asthma.

Then one day I came down with pneumonia. That was the start of my problems worsening, although I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought I’d recover fully and I’d be OK.

But some years later, I went down with bronchitis. My gas tank finally ran out. I spent a week in hospital, and after that I had exacerbation after exacerbation of my asthma.

I had no idea what was causing it, but I just could not get the tank filled up. My lungs would not take in the required amount of oxygen to allow me to operate. My inhalers seemed useless. I was coughing, gasping for air, coughing again. This isn’t right, I thought. My asthma attacks wouldn’t usually go on for months like this.

Test after test after test, and eventually at the young age of 36 I was diagnosed with COPD. Six months later at 37, I was also diagnosed with bronchiectasis. So basically my gas tank has holes in it, but is also blocked up. Some of my airways have widened, while others are restricted by large amounts of phlegm gathering in numerous little pockets along the pipes. The pneumonia I had nine years previously had scarred one of my lungs to an extent that eventually they just started giving up on me.

I found it was getting harder for me to walk long distances. I had to keep stopping to catch my breath or take my inhaler. Or both. I started using a walking stick and folks would ask why. “There’s nothing wrong with your legs,” they’d say. And they’d be right. But sometimes when I need to stop to catch my breath for a few minutes, or take my inhaler, it helps to have something to rest on. There isn’t always a bench, or a bus stop seat, or a wall, so the stick becomes my resting prop. It’s hard for some people to understand that, even doctors. But it does help.

I struggle with steps, which can be a problem if I’m climbing the stairs at someplace like a tube station. I’ll have to stop halfway up to catch my breath. But people don’t see that. I’m just in their way. I get looked at strangely. I get sworn at or told to move.

Just like you can’t see the gas tank in your car, you can’t see my lungs. You can’t see how inflamed they feel, or how badly my chest is hurting. You see me gasping for breath and might think I’m just a lazy unfit so-and-so, or a 60-a-day smoker. But nothing could be further from the truth. You can’t see the effort I put into going out sometimes so I don’t become housebound, and the two or three days of recovery time afterwards.

The medications they put me on have helped, but I believe I’ll never be the way I was again. I’ll never again be the fit young fella that could walk for miles.

So please. If you’re having issues with your breathing, if you find you have a cough for more than a few weeks, don’t put it off; get it checked out by your doctor. Ask to be referred to a specialist if necessary. And if you see me or someone like me on the street standing there catching my breath, please don’t assume I’m just doing that to inconvenience you. Have a little forethought and compassion that there might be something wrong, and I need those few minutes of respite.