I’m a 37 year old female. I haven’t smoked a day in my life, nor am I consistently around second hand smoke. I do have a history of childhood asthma which I outgrew by the time I was out of elementary school. To my knowledge I don’t think it was classified as “severe”; I had an inhaler and took nebulizer treatments.
I followed up for annual PFT the other week, as when I was 17 I started with flare ups with the asthma again where I would get it and and then it would seem to go away for years. I expected this to just be my normal “everything is good, come back for testing next year visit”, but it wasn’t.
The pulmonologist said that my PFT still technically fell in the “normal” range at 82%, but it was in the 90’s last year (I think they said 96) and that I had other tests within the PFT that suggested asthma and others that suggested COPD. My PFT last year didn’t show either. I had a finger poke blood test in office and a CT ordered.
I was taken aback by my possible diagnosis. I have no cough. No wheezing. Phlegm production in the morning is rare, and I don’t have to cough to bring it up, just kind of pretend that I’m sucking through a straw and I can draw plegm out of my throat, so I always thought it was a result of post nasal drip. Shortness of breath is intermittent and fickle - I may get it sitting down doing nothing, or I may get it making a bed and I can go months or years without experiencing any shortness of breath at all. I do have lower extremity edema, but I also have a diagnosis of venous insufficiency.
I’m at the higher end of a healthy weight range, go to the gym regularly and lift as well as run on the elliptical anywhere from three to seven miles five days a week. No problems.
Is it possible the PFT could be wrong? I have a naturally slow breath rate and tech kept having to tell me that I needed to breathe faster which didn’t feel natural to me at all. I have a narrow jaw (also noted by my dentist) and I had a hard time getting my teeth fitted over the mouthpiece. I also had to do some of the tests over because she kept saying things like I wasn’t exhaling at the right marker - I always seemed to be late and never able to time it right. She wouldn’t have just given up and sent the test in if I wasn’t doing it right, would they?
I’m getting pretty anxious and depressed at the thought of having a terminal disease in my 30s. The only family I have is my father; I’ve never married and can’t have kids due to endometriosis and PCOS. I work at home so I have no co workers I see and all my childhood friends moved away. I’m socially isolated. I’m shy and introverted and not good at making friends. My mother died in her 50’s from pulmonary hypertension and I’m worried of being like her and dying really young with half my life in front of me and either not having anyone be there or dying at home alone and no one finding me for weeks or months latter while my pets starve to death.