31 DAYS OF CYSTIC FIBROSIS
Hemoptysis: A Fancy Word for a Lung Bleed
Day 17: I coughed up a liter of blood and drove myself to hospital
Years ago, I had watched my best friend Julie cough mouthfuls of blood and casually spit into the sink as if it was no big deal. So when I first saw bloody streaks in my sputum, I wasn’t overly concerned. At times there were more than streaks, and sometimes those episodes lingered longer than I would have liked.
One night I went to bed feeling fine. I woke from a deep sleep in a coughing fit. In my dream, someone was spraying the back of my throat with a water pistol (everyone else has strange dreams too, right?). Eventually, I woke up enough to realise that there was no water pistol and that I was experiencing a massive bleed.
I returned to bed, where my son lay sleeping, and coughed up around 400mls of blood. When I eventually stopped, I looked a mess. There was blood over the sheets and through my hair. I cleaned up, then sat upright in bed until dawn. With the dawn came my morning cough, and that sparked another round of bleeding — another 300ml.
Once Jarryn was awake, I got him ready for school. As I did, I was discreetly spitting blood into a plastic cup which I once again filled. I drove Jarryn to school before driving myself to hospital. I was hoping to talk my way into doing antibiotics at home, but my medical staff wouldn’t budge.
It was the first time since Jarryn had been born that I was admitted to hospital.
Snap, crackle, and pop
For the next three years, I was a random bleeder. There is a particular sensation, hard to describe, but a hybrid feeling that manages to both push and pull at the same time. After that, you can both feel and hear the crackle of blood pooling in your lungs. So I call it, ‘snap, crackle and pop’, It would strike without warning, seemingly when I was feeling fine, however, an infection had been bubbling away in the background.
Three years after my bleeds started, they stopped.
31 Days of Cystic Fibrosis Bonus Fact
As I was collecting Jarryn from my Gran’s after school, I went snap, crackle, and pop, and blood filled my mouth. I never liked to worry my Gran, so I was trying to hustle Jarryn out the door before she could notice.
Jarryn wasn’t displaying any signs of moving in a hurry. So, as I am a delightful mother, I turned my back on Gran and gave Jarryn the full Gene Simmons — bloody mouth complete with waggling tongue. He moved pretty quickly after that, and my Gran was none the wiser!
31 Days of Cystic Fibrosis is an awareness-raising campaign to coincide with the national Cystic Fibrosis (CF) awareness month in Australia.
Next in the 31 Days of Cystic Fibrosis series — The Reasonably Good Health I Had Enjoyed Up to This Point Would Not Continue Forever
Traveling with CF. Once I started traveling, I didn’t want to stop.
If you’ve just joined the journey and want to start at the beginning, you’ll find the first post here:
