Short of Breath

We have a string of houses in the East end of our district where every house seems to have someone with respiratory problems. One afternoon we were toned out fora woman with difficulty breathing. When we arrived we found a woman in her early 50's sitting on the couch with a nasal cannula (attached to a 75 foot hose that was snaked all around the house).

The patient stated that she had been short of breath for several days but it has gradually been getting worse. She denied having any chest pain or recent illness. No cough either. We then moved on to her extensive medical history.She was a chronic smoker, had COPD, emphysema, asthma, lung cancer and had had her left lung removed. I'm not quite sure why she was short of breath. The funny part was that all we did to make her feel much better was turn her oxygen (on her machine) up from 2 LPM to 6 LPM.

As soon as AMR showed up we got her loaded into the ambulance and on her way. I can only imagine what the doctor told her. Probably something along the lines of' "You're feeling short of breath?! You're lucky to be breathing at all."