Or: How Andy got his breath back
Struggling to breath is just no fun. For my adult life I have struggled with breathing issues. I have always just attributed this to the fact I’m very overweight. It makes sense, right? Fat guy can’t breath doing things others are able to do.
I really started noticing this when golfing with my brother. We golfed every week and I got so into I was working out to improve my game. I lost weight, not a lot, but I did lose some. Even thought I lost ~30lbs the breathing didn’t improve, like at all. Walking up to each green to put was a chore that would cause my wheeze and would take me time to catch my breath. By hole 18 I was so tired sometimes I didn’t even finish the hole and would just give up. This didn’t matter if it was hot or cold, humid or dry.
Things started getting really bad in the past year and a half or so. I have started struggle to breath walking to the bathroom. In the morning it took me half an hour to build up the energy to get dressed. Some mornings I would be so winded in the shower I would gasp for breath and then swollow a bunch of water and choke. Those days would be more like an hour after waking before I got dressed.
Then the mucus, oh the mucus! So much of it, if mucus was currency I would be a rich man. Every cough, and there were a lot of coughs, would bring up mucus.
All I described above was the norm for me. I still assumed it was because I was overweight so I never sought treatment.
2026, The Year of the Garden
When I married a Master Gardner I knew we’d have a garden. I knew I would be drafted into service helping where I could be helpful. What I didn’t calculate was just how much I enjoy growing something from nothing. That’s a topic for a whole other blog post but suffice to say I very much enjoy being outside working around pollen, dust, and sometimes even smoke.
All the work outside caused me to have what I thought was a broncittis type infection at least 4 times so far in 2026. I was (un)lucky enough to have one during my annual wellness exam. I told my Doctor about the breathing issues and he told me that they’d treat my infection and if my breathing didn’t get better he would send me for a Pulmonary Function Test but he didn’t seem that worried about my breathing. I took the meds and started to feel a bit better. Then, another episode causes me to message my doctor and ask for the PFT. I schedule it and reschedule it about 1800 times, thanks ADHD.
It’s late April and I’m about to turn 43 and I have the worst episode I’ve had for the longest amount of time. I had to call in a whole week of work and I even took flu and COVID tests. Finally, Mel talks me into going into an urgent care. The course of care is again meds I was given by my doc. I spend my birthday and the weekend before and the weekend after laid up at home debating multiple times if I should goto the ER.
“I just can’t see how I’m going to do this [the lack of breath] for another 30-40 years,” I tell my wife while struggling to even get that sentance out.
She gently suggests, like only she can, that I call and get my PFT back on the books. Now I’m committed. I can’t cancel. My next 30-40 years are on the line. I just found my person a year and a half ago and talked her into marrying me 5 months ago I can’t spend my time with her gasping for breath after I go pee or walk into the kitchen for a snack.
PFT day shows up and I’m not quite having an episode but it’s not great Bob. As the respitory tech walks us back to the PFT lab she hits me with:
“How long have had this wheeze and shortness of breath?”
This was just walking from the waiting room not even 200 steps to the PFT lab.
“Most of my adult life, really. But really bad in the last 2-3 years,” I tell her as my anexity goes thru the roof.
Part of the PFT is to give an inhaler to test how your lungs react to meds. When I took that inhaler I felt like a whole new man. It was like night and day. So much so I thought it might be a placebo effect. I get done with the battery of tests and the tech looks at the results.
“Have you ever been told you have Asthma?” she asks with a concerned look on her face. I tell her no and of course she can’t diagnose me but she can read a PFT after doing this for 25 years.
I make a doctors appointment with my primary care doc to talk about the PFT, even before the PFT results are back. We talk about my struggles and how the tech asked about Asthma and he finally perscribes me an inhaler to take as maintance and one to take when it’s really bad. The next day the pulmongist reads the PFT and has words like major obstruction and early stage damage.
In cases like this, to a certian extent, knowlege is not power. I google the key phrases I took out of the results and everything pointed to COPD. My Librarian bride also did a deep dive and concured that’s what it sounded like. My PCP looked at the pulminolgist’s comments and said he would be refering me to pulmonology.
Dealing with the fact I may have COPD as a 40 somthing never smoker was a little hard to swollow. The meds my PCP had me start were helping but I was already digging my grave before I talked to a pulmonogist.
With luck I almost never have the pulmonogy department called and they had an opening the same week! I could get my answers and treatment plan fast. This was both a relief and panic inducing all at the same time. What would I be told? I didn’t think I would be given XX number of months or years but I didn’t know if my hobbies would be doable.
At the hospital we spoke with the doctor and he told us that given my results and my weight I almost 100% had Asthma. Having all those bad results didn’t always mean COPD and didn’t have that. We talked about what inhalers to get and he put me on more modern verisons of what my PCP put me on. The meds would take about three weeks to really help.
I can breathe!
Now that the meds have really started to help I finally feel like I can do things I want to do. This weekend I hauled over 50 bags of dirt and 16 cinder blocks from my truck to the garden. It felt great. I now walk to the bathroom and don’t gasp when I get back to my chair.
I still have bad days, for sure. But, I now know those days are going to be less and less.
