Lung Clearance
Non-mechanical lung clearance: (Pro tip: Do this while showering.)
Current medical dogma is that people with CF overproduce mucus and they are "drowning in their own mucus." I think that's BS but that's a post for another time.
Regardless, the reality is that daily lung clearance is a standard practice for people with CF and it was for me until very recently. When I was first diagnosed, I used mechanical intervention prescribed by my physician.
People with CF use a variety of techniques, including percussion -- in other words, someone tapping on your back to help loosen things so you can cough it up. This leads to joke t-shirts and the like that say things like "Excuse me. It's time to go beat my child."
When I was first diagnosed with atypical CF, I was prescribed a flutter valve for purposes of lung clearance and my son was prescribed some other torture device. Neither of us liked these mechanical things AND you had to sterilize them so you wouldn't give yourself some horrid infection.
So I used to boil stuff daily at home -- sometimes multiple times a day -- because I had all this medical stuff that had to be sterilized. This meant there were a few incidents where the pot wasn't watched (because we were all so sick) and all the water boiled out of it and some bulb syringes or whatever had to be replaced because they were turned to slag. And the pot had to be replaced and yadda.
It also meant the apartment was constantly extremely humid and as I got healthier and found other ways to handle things and so forth, not boiling water all the live long day meant my home was less humid and this meant there was less mold and stuff in the air. Air quality went up and my health generally was better because of it.
So I still have to do lung clearance at times but I no longer use mechanical intervention. And my quality of life is vastly better in myriad ways because of it.
Until recently, I generally did some lung clearance with every shower but it long ago stopped being a big deal most days. I usually don't bring up much anymore.
I have gone through periods where I was bringing up a whole LOT of stuff. I used to bring up so much fluid and crud from my lungs that it was hard to tell if I was vomiting or coughing up crud from my lungs.
When that happens, it feels a whole lot like vomiting but it's like mostly white foamy stuff and fluids. My son and I dubbed this process "puking up a lung."
When we began doing that, it took us some time to figure out that we weren't actually vomiting. We didn't immediately realize that all this stuff was originating in our lungs, not our stomachs.
The technique I used for a long time to do non-mechanical lung clearance is I stood with my feet about shoulder-width apart or a bit further, bent my knees slightly and bent over from the waist as far as I could to get gravity working for me instead of against me. Then I would cough as hard as I could.
For a long time, I did this in the shower every single time I showered. I lived in an old SRO and I would go use one of the showers down the hall and not use the shower in our room so I wouldn't contaminate our small living space.
I went through a fairly long period where "puking up a lung" was a routine part of my life and I sometimes was getting up multiple times a night to go do that. If I hadn't known how to effectively clear my lungs during that time, having that much gunk and fluid in my lungs could have been deadly. But I did know how to bring it up and it was a part of my healing process.
At such times, I would know to get up and go clear my lungs during the night because my eyes and nose would start watering, among other things. I eventually concluded that sometimes when my eyes and sinuses were watery, it was like an overflow valve for the crud in my lungs. So if you have a lot of junk coming out of your eyes or sinuses, lung clearance may help reduce that.
Mechanical intervention for medical stuff can be lifesaving but finding other methods has really improved my quality of life tremendously. Using non-mechanical lung clearance methods is less hassle overall, it helps me keep my home cleaner because I'm not boiling stuff constantly and it eliminates the risk that I will accidentally give myself a horrible infection from using improperly sterilized medical equipment.
I was really shocked at how much better the air quality was at home after I stopped having to boil medical stuff constantly. I absolutely did not expect that and would not have predicted it.
Stand with feet about shoulder-width apart and slightly bent knees, bend over from the waist as far as possible to get gravity working for you instead of against you. Then cough as hard as you can.
Current medical dogma is that people with CF overproduce mucus and they are "drowning in their own mucus." I think that's BS but that's a post for another time.
Regardless, the reality is that daily lung clearance is a standard practice for people with CF and it was for me until very recently. When I was first diagnosed, I used mechanical intervention prescribed by my physician.
People with CF use a variety of techniques, including percussion -- in other words, someone tapping on your back to help loosen things so you can cough it up. This leads to joke t-shirts and the like that say things like "Excuse me. It's time to go beat my child."
When I was first diagnosed with atypical CF, I was prescribed a flutter valve for purposes of lung clearance and my son was prescribed some other torture device. Neither of us liked these mechanical things AND you had to sterilize them so you wouldn't give yourself some horrid infection.
So I used to boil stuff daily at home -- sometimes multiple times a day -- because I had all this medical stuff that had to be sterilized. This meant there were a few incidents where the pot wasn't watched (because we were all so sick) and all the water boiled out of it and some bulb syringes or whatever had to be replaced because they were turned to slag. And the pot had to be replaced and yadda.
It also meant the apartment was constantly extremely humid and as I got healthier and found other ways to handle things and so forth, not boiling water all the live long day meant my home was less humid and this meant there was less mold and stuff in the air. Air quality went up and my health generally was better because of it.
So I still have to do lung clearance at times but I no longer use mechanical intervention. And my quality of life is vastly better in myriad ways because of it.
Until recently, I generally did some lung clearance with every shower but it long ago stopped being a big deal most days. I usually don't bring up much anymore.
I have gone through periods where I was bringing up a whole LOT of stuff. I used to bring up so much fluid and crud from my lungs that it was hard to tell if I was vomiting or coughing up crud from my lungs.
When that happens, it feels a whole lot like vomiting but it's like mostly white foamy stuff and fluids. My son and I dubbed this process "puking up a lung."
When we began doing that, it took us some time to figure out that we weren't actually vomiting. We didn't immediately realize that all this stuff was originating in our lungs, not our stomachs.
The technique I used for a long time to do non-mechanical lung clearance is I stood with my feet about shoulder-width apart or a bit further, bent my knees slightly and bent over from the waist as far as I could to get gravity working for me instead of against me. Then I would cough as hard as I could.
For a long time, I did this in the shower every single time I showered. I lived in an old SRO and I would go use one of the showers down the hall and not use the shower in our room so I wouldn't contaminate our small living space.
I went through a fairly long period where "puking up a lung" was a routine part of my life and I sometimes was getting up multiple times a night to go do that. If I hadn't known how to effectively clear my lungs during that time, having that much gunk and fluid in my lungs could have been deadly. But I did know how to bring it up and it was a part of my healing process.
At such times, I would know to get up and go clear my lungs during the night because my eyes and nose would start watering, among other things. I eventually concluded that sometimes when my eyes and sinuses were watery, it was like an overflow valve for the crud in my lungs. So if you have a lot of junk coming out of your eyes or sinuses, lung clearance may help reduce that.
Mechanical intervention for medical stuff can be lifesaving but finding other methods has really improved my quality of life tremendously. Using non-mechanical lung clearance methods is less hassle overall, it helps me keep my home cleaner because I'm not boiling stuff constantly and it eliminates the risk that I will accidentally give myself a horrible infection from using improperly sterilized medical equipment.
I was really shocked at how much better the air quality was at home after I stopped having to boil medical stuff constantly. I absolutely did not expect that and would not have predicted it.
