My mother is 60, and other than being a lifelong asthmatic, allergies and some arthritis, she is in fantastic health. She smoked off and on for about 10 years but quit more than 20 years ago. used to be pretty overweight but started eating keto, working out (swimming and spinning) about 3 years ago and is now at a healthy body weight. She rarely uses her albuterol and still makes sure to get her heart rate up and exercises almost every day.
But she went to the doctor earlier in the week for a weird clicking/popping feeling in her abdomen when she moves in certain directions (doesn’t hurt but just weird) and they did an abdomen/chest x-ray which came back as “possible emphysema.” We are both shocked and admittedly very scared.
Her pcp said that if she was experiencing any shortness of breath that she could recommend her to a pulmonologist, but even though my mom hasn’t been experiencing any out of the ordinary symptoms she has chosen to go to a pulmonologist anyway.
She is doing ok, but I am spiraling. I thought that maybe since she hasn’t had any symptoms if the pulmonologist does confirm emphysema than maybe it’s mild or early stages, but I’ve been doing what I know I shouldn’t and googling and I see things that say usually x-rays don’t show anything until it’s severe. Is this true?
I’m sorry this is so long. My mother has health anxiety and so do I, but i don’t want to trigger her so I haven’t been talking to her about my fears and I have no one to talk to, so I thought i’d write here. In 2009 a nurse practitioner saw some imaging and told my mom she might have lung cancer, and it was awful waiting to see the specialist thinking she had cancer. The specialist said that there was some lung scarring probably from past bronchitis or pneumonia or something, but other than that there was nothing to be concerned about. Since then I tend to go off the deep end with things like this.
i’m sorry for the ramble. Any thoughts would be so welcome.
-Ashley