thank you
Mary :O
I had my first episode with spitting up blood in November 2009. I could hear the blood literally squirting or spraying into my throat, like having your thumb on the flow of water from a water hose; lots of velocity. It happened again this week. Each time it has lasted less than a week, but I've lost as much as a cup and a half of blood in short periods of time. With the first incident, pneumonia and coughing were blamed for the burst blood vessel in my left lung. But with last week’s episode, I didn't have the same scenario going on - no coughing or pneumonia. Finally realized that I was getting a severe head ache about every 2-hours, too, so I began to monitor my b/p which I discovered was staying HIGH (well, on my worst day of bleeding), and I began to treat it by taking allowed extra doses of my b/p meds each time (about 80mg total of Lisinopril). The bleeding which was severe, stopped. Prior to this, I think my b/p had started inching up and had stayed too high and for too long, without me noticing it; because, after all, I was taking my heart meds daily - thinking that was all I needed to do. --Of which, evidently led to extreme pressure on a blood vessel in my lungs, causing it to burst. I am also a heavy smoker, but am working on quitting, though the doctors have confirmed I am one of those rarities that is chemically dependent on nicotine, so I may have to quit by staying on some sort of nicotine, forever - if necessary. I am 61 years old.
I thought I'd share my experience with this problem. I'm a 52 year old, and had my first lung bleed when I was 44. I've had about 7 recurrences in that time, each worse than the last. The first time I only coughed up about 20mls and it was all over in a minute. The last one (about a month ago) I coughed up about 1.5 litres over a 13 day period; one of those episodes was 500mls in one hit. Prior to the last episode, the bleeding has eventually stopped of it's own accord. With the last one I ended up having an angiogram to embolise the arteries that were feeding the section of lung that was bleeding. I've had X-Rays, CT scans, bronchoscopies and numerous blood tests looking for possible causes and, at this stage, the only explanation they have is friable (fragile) veins. I've never smoked, but had bad asthma as a child, that developed into exercise induced asthma in my adolescence. I've managed it with Ventolin and Serotide since then and the asthma doesn't give me much grief anymore. I typically get bronchitis a few times a year, and had pneumonia in my 30's. My blood pressure is perfect. Considering how irregularly I exercise, I have reasonable fitness. A trend that seems to be appearing is that the bleeds occur within a week or so of me doing some form of exercise that requires my lungs to work harder than normal. For example, in the lead up to the last episode I was doing quite a lot of walking, including a very brisk walk up a steep hill 5 days earlier.