Pulmonary Embolism Support Group
By far the most common form of pulmonary embolism is a thromboembolism, which occurs when a blood clot, generally a venous thrombus, becomes dislodged from its site of formation and embolizes to the arterial blood supply of one of the lungs. Symptoms may include difficulty breathing, pain during breathing, and more rarely circulatory instability and death.
My husband has just been diagnosed with more than multiple blood clots in his lungs... P.M.
I need advice on anything. Paying for Disability Insurance? Did it even help? Medications other than blood thinners that help? At least with coughing and breathing.
Anything, anything will help. Please.
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Look at what my best friend did with my picture!
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We all have 24 hours in a day. How we spend these hours is important. Watching a little bit of a video about how sitting affects us made me aware of how much sitting and laying down I do. Gonna have to work on that.Your turn. Tell me another truth.
Disability insurance has to be in place before you get sick so that ship has sailed, but check around for any disability benefits you might have that you didn't know about. It's often provided as a work benefit so check with his employer, and depending on where you live there may be other short term or long term disability benefits offered by your government.
For coughing and breathing, the three things that helped me the most initially were:
1) for clearing the lungs and pneumonia prevention exercises - sitting up or standing instead of lying down; walking around the hospital or house several times a day; taking in five deep slow breaths holding for several seconds each time you inflate your lungs followed by a good cough about once an hour to start; and using the incentive spirometer they gave me. The walking and the 5 breaths/cough seemed to help the most.
2) for shortness of breath, pursed lip breathing was very helpful. There are lots of videos and instructions available through googling it.
Most of the materials are directed at COPD patients but the technique is the same . Be aware that shortness of breath and blood oxygen levels are not very closely connected; I often felt like crap breathing wise while my oxygen saturation in my blood was fine (and didn't feel like crap when my oxygen wasn't fine). I got a pulse oximeter from Amazon so I could reassure myself that I was safe at home when I felt terrible.
3) They put me on a CPAP machine at night in the hospital while I was on oxygen and I brought one home with me. The higher air pressure really helped with my breathing. I find sometimes I need to lie down with it on for 20 minutes or so during the daytime too.
Other things to keep in mind, temperature changes and humidity have a big effect on my ability to breathe. I am much less able to tolerate irritants like pollen, smoke and chemicals than I could before. My ability to breathe and energy levels deteriorate over the course of the day so I try to do chores early. And digestion uses a lot of oxygen so try to do the active stuff before you eat or have small meals more often. He will get better but this is basically a heart attack of the lungs so it will take time to heal the trauma (that's also a useful way to explain what happened and how serious it is to friends and family who have never heard of it before).
The biggest complaint people have is the lack of info about recovery, if you have time take a peek through some of the older threads here. And many people struggle more with the emotional part of it and their newfound anxiety than with the physical part, if this is you or your husband it may help to talk to someone about it.
Good luck!