What does emphysema feel like?

Answer 1

Emphysema is a chronic lung condition in which a person is unable to get enough oxygen (O2) and unable to expel enough carbon dioxide (CO2) However, this O2-CO2 exchange problem is very unique-- it cannot be helped or cured by simply giving more O2.

In normal healthy lungs, the lungs and brain work together. When the brain senses high CO2 building up, it triggers us to take a breath to get O2 and to expel air to release CO2.

But, in emphysema, the brain and lungs get used to the fact that the blood contains higher CO2. If an emphysema patient is given high O2, such as 8 liters per minute, the person can stop breathing. *Therefore, it is important that paramedics and hospital workers know the patient has emphysema so that supplemental oxygen delivery is kept around 2 liters per minute.

You've asked what it feels like to have emphysema. First, it is scary because the person cannot get enough air no matter what they try. Most patients have to sit up all the time, including to sleep. Lying down makes the person feel like they have a pillow over their mouth and nose; the person feels like they are suffocating. When people feel like they are suffocating, they panic (normal reaction), so they fight to get upright if someone tries to put them flat on a bed.

As the disease progresses, the lungs fill with a sticky thick mucous. The lungs react by initiating coughing to remove the mucous. The person coughs up thick phlegm that is hard to cough up and out. The lungs don't contract as well, even in coughing, so no matter how much the person coughs, they still feel the lungs are clogged. If the thick mucous is low, deep down in the lungs near the aveoli (where O2 and CO2 exchange takes place), the person can feel like they are drowning. Again, the normal reaction to a "drowning feeling" is panic and "fighting to get air".

The person's face will often turn red when they are coughing. The exertion does not help the lack of air situation. They will also start sweating profusely during heavy coughing. Nights may often be sleepless because of coughing and because it is hard to rest sitting up.

The person may not want to move much because it's hard to get air. Shortness of breath often is present with mild exertion. Just to walk a few feet to the bathroom feels too hard. So people with emphysema don't like to drink much since then, they'd have to urinate. The decreased fluids make the mucous thicker and harder to cough up the phlegm.

The person's life becomes one centered on "getting air". Many patients detest heat because it's harder to breathe. Patients will even stand at an open door during winter, just to get "enough air". Many sleep with a fan directed on the face. Many need supplemental continuous O2 at home, so there is usually 1 to 3 O2 tanks in the home.

The patient's lips and nails may turn blue when O2 stats are down. Fingernails often grow rounded, blunted, and oddly shaped as a sign of low blood oxygenation.

Most patients feel embrarrassment because the condition makes them look and feel "different" from everyone else. Patients also feel "losses" because slowly, they have to give up things they normally do. Life is permanently changed when you can't breathe well.

Many patients feel humiliated when outsiders accuse them of getting emphysema from prior smoking of cigarettes, when some emphysema patients have never smoked even one cigarette. It is possible to develop emphysema from causes other than smoking. For example, many people who grew up with coal furnances to heat the home ended up with emphysema. Some occupations increase the exposure to lung irritants.

Many patients come to a resigned outlook about the condition. They know it will never improve. They know the disease will kill, whether from mucous plugging the airways, or from a secondary infection.

Answer 2

It feels like your bleeding from the inside its cold and very uncomfortable.

Answer 3

Pneumonia will have the symptoms like flu with a cough, fever, headache, and sometimes stomach pain. Often it may have chest pain also

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