Hello everyone,
I have a question to ask the community and the docs here, which I hope may be helpful to others too.
Background: I am a white male, 43 years old, 175cm and 65kg, who smoked one pack of cigarettes from 14 to 24 years old and tons of cannabis from 24 years onwards.
I am slightly confused about which doctor I should really believe in after being sent to a CT and a spirometry test recently. My employer demanded a compulsory health check, during which the practitioner told me that she can hear some sounds from my lungs and demanded a computer tomography of my lungs. I was surprised because I had almost no symptoms or complaints (no cough, no mucus, regular 10km walks with my dog, 20km mountain hiking trips etc.). However, the CT report claimed that I had advanced paraseptal empysema,bullae, thickening of broncial walls and recommended that I see a pulmonologist immediately. So I did, I saw a very well renowned professor, who looked at my tomography CD, told me that I did some serious damage to my lungs and sent me to a spirometry and DLCO test. I attached my test results above. After the test, the professor said that she cannot diagnose me with COPD, there is no functional damage to my lungs yet. She prescribed nothing and told me to look after myself well from now on.
By the way, I quit smoking cold turkey on the day of the tomography and bought a top quality air purifier. I read over 100 medicine articles on emphysema, bronchial wall thickening and lung regeneration and started a diet rich on vitamin A and C, flavonoids, anthocyanins, catechins, gingerols, omega 3 etc. (I already was on a similar diet before my CT, I just intensified the dose and I completely cut processed meat, cotton/palm oil based food). I am running 6 -7 km four days a week; I climb around 500 stairs per day and I have absolutely no complaints of shortness of breath while doing these activities. I measure my oxygen saturation at least twenty times a day, before and after exercise and it never falls below 97-98% even after running; generally it is at 99%. My resting heart rate is around 65 bpm, some mornings even at 62-63 bpm if I cut sugar for a few days. I have done a treadmill test and the doctors said all is normal. How is all this possible? How can it look like I have advanced paraseptal emphysema/thick bronchial walls on a CT scan and my spirometry tests and personal experience with physical effort be like this?
A few weeks ago, I asked my pulmonologist for another CT to confirm the first one but she refused to take a new one before 6 months and she said that she hears no sounds from my lungs. Does anybody have any experience with a similar case? Should I just go to another private hospital without letting them know about any of these previous tests and redo everything? I don’t want to go through radiation again but I cannot help thinking about these contradictory signs. The idea that I have advanced emphysema has been eating me inside for the last few months and I just want to know the exact truth…