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Hemoptysis: Bleeding Lungs

BloodIf any friends or family members don’t want to think about me bleeding from my lungs or what my cough is like from my perspective, come back for my next post… this one might be disturbing to you, but if you can stand it, it will give you a lot of insight into my past and present.

Still here? Good!

Hemoptysis is one of the words CFers hate. I’d rather be called a cuss word than a “hemoptysizer.” /shudder! It’s when your lung springs a vascular leak either due to an infection or when gunk that was previously in one spot eating away at your lining gets removed either from exercise or medication. It’s an indication of one of three things that I’m aware of as a non-pulmonologist with 12 years of medical training:

  • that something got dislodged over an infected site and you’re on the mend
  • that you have an infection that needs to be hit with meds
  • that you have an underlying pulmonary/vascular weak spot that needs to be plugged

My history of hemoptysis

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