Well, it's official.....

I'm copd free.....................and my doctor is an idiot!!!!

Or maybe not, I'm not entirely sure but you be the judge because I'm going to tell the story here and now.

Went to the doctor today, not just about the lungs but about a few other things, but I was also going to touch on the lung subject and my recent find of black mold in my house while I was there of course. You see, I'm not entirely satisfied with his answers. Calling me in to the office a month back to tell me my xray showed I had copd/emphysema, and xray that was taken at the hospital emerg for what then deduced to be NCCP (non cardiac chest pain) When doc called me in to give me the copd news he wrote me for albuterol x3 refills told me not to worry and shuffled me out the door...... It left me to find out everything on my own and seek comfort here at this site with all you good people. I quit smoking immediately and realised that the NCCP was due to something that was causing swelling in my lungs. I actually felt like I had air trapped in my lungs and as strange as it may sound it felt like my lungs were too big to fit into my chest properly and I've actually got a pretty damned big rib cage to fit them in being about 46 inches around at 5'10". So after I started the quit smoking cut down I realised it was like just in the nick of time because my last couple of cigs inhaling the smoke was like inhaling fire or dropping hot coals down my throat. Anyways I cut back over about a week and quit and whatever was going on in my lungs began to subside a fair bit, I'd say about 80% at a guess and my excercise routine instituted at the same time as the quit smoking plan went very well too, my cardio increasing quite qiuckly, the swelling in the lungs going down much but on the other hand I was having an asthma like response I'd never felt in my life which scared hell out of me. The feeling of a band or belt constricting my chest and I actually started to need the inhaler he'd given me a week earlier. So in one way I was getting better and in another worse.
After a month I went back to the hospital on my own to get another look at what was going on in my chest, mainly because of this constriction thing. The result of the new xray is that the lungs looked much better and there was no longer any sign of copd emphysema. The er doc showed me the xray and pointed out all the damage from smoking and said "all this white stuff you see here will return to black as long as you continue not smoking. A trip to my docs the next day gave the same report. I asked him "what the hell" and he mainly just shrugged and said whatever was going on in your lungs at the time caused it to appear like you had emphysema but gone is gone and he was quite impressed with my physical capacity. So here I am about 10 days later, I've discovered black mold in my house and I'm curious if that could have been the cause of all my lung trouble starting up because of course "I WANT ANSWERS!!" as I think most anyone would. So during the appointment I told him about the mold and asked him if this could be the cause of my lung trouble and d'y'know, after telling me that I need to get rid of the mold (which is yeah, no doubt genius kind of obvious) he actually got kind of snappy with me saying something like "I already told you mr zigzzagz, your lungs are just fine!!, you don't have copd". Well, I'll tell you my blood started to boil and I don't let myself do this kind of thing because it's generaly wrong to be intimidating but you see I'm kind of big and muscular, my face is hard and mean looking to someone who doesn't know me and I've got alot of scars from accidents and such and it was this danged doc jumping the gun and getting me wound up about copd unneccesarily that started the trouble. So I kind of let my chest and shoulders out to their full extent put my deadest "you are in the crosshairs" face and said "are you lying to me? Are you hiding something from me?" Anyways his snappy attitude disapeared which was all I wanted, that and a little respect for the trouble this copd caused in my life and his "shoulder shrugging" attitude to it. So I smiled and said I was just kidding. But how dare he do that, and why doesn't he have answers or even set me up for something that will find me my answers. So no, it would seem a sure thing I have no COPD and glory to god for that, but something certainly set something off in my body, and is it permanent? Now that the black mold is gone, and I should say that the black mold symptoms fits like a check list of my health problems. I would expect my doctor would want to know as much as I do. Will I be on an inhaler for ever now? Was it something else that triggered this? The further the smoking gets behind me the healthier I'll get no doubt an the longer the mold is gone the more I recover from it I hope, and pray.
So that's my story, and hopefully that's the end of it for the COPD part. What do you all think of it? Of my experience? Of my doc? I respet so many of you here and your opinions mean something to me too. I will be around the site here, but maybe not so much as before but I will be around. I've made you my people and you just can't unmake something like that. It's like blood brothers, you just can't undo it. Lol

zigzzagz, copd free to stay I hope. Hooray..