Help me understand
Hello, I decided to post here because I lost my father 3 weeks ago, and I'm trying to understand or make sense of it, if someone could help me
The doctors that tried to save him said it was copd, more specifically a copd exacerbation?
The moment it happened, wednesday morning, he was struggling to breath, I wasn't there, mom called an ambulance, the doctors came, heart was fine, it was the lungs, they put an oxygen mask but then he was gone, peacefully, as if he started to fall asleep.
Last year, I think at the end of the year, he started having a loud and chronic cough, it wouldn't stop, he said it was allergies. This year the cough was constant, and very, very loud and abrupt, every day, morning, evening, night, etc. Also at beggining of this year he started getting severly out of breath after walking a few blocks, maybe going up the stairs, and the past few weeks before passing he started having trouble to sleep
He smoked, quite a lot, I think maybe 2 packs a day, especially in quarantine, and these past two years he got quite sedentary (but he also had other issues that made him sedentary, such as diabetes type 2, psoriasic arthritis, spondylitis, etc and took lots of medication, he lived in pain 24/7, honestly he suffered a lot his whole life)
My uncle (his brother) also smoked a lot and died a coulpe years ago from copd because he refused to stop smoking. My dad also refused, he would get angry if I, family or doctors told him to quit.
When asked about these episodes after walking a few blocks where he would struggle to breath he said it was his diaphragm (he had an accident at 19 years old and caused him to have the right side of the diaphragm elevated and paralyzed) so he brushed it off, and he was doing some medical studies but he didn't do a spirometry, so now that he is gone, I just want to understand, does this sound like he had an undiagnosed copd??? Because I just don't think it was his diaphragm, I know nothing of medicine but reading on the internet it seems he actually had copd, but I'm not sure and I want to understand, for reference he was 60 years old, and started smoking pretty young, probably in his 20s
Hi
, firstly, I am so sorry to hear about the passing of your beloved Dad. Losing a parent is so hard and I wish you peace during this difficult time. While I am not a doctor, and we can't offer a medical diagnosis over the internet, your Dads symptoms do sound familiar to what some of our other community members experience. If you want to read more about COPD and it's symptoms, these articles are where I would start: https://copd.net/basics, https://copd.net/symptoms and https://copd.net/basics/acute-exacerbations. I'm not sure if anyone other than your father's doctor can say for sure what caused him to pass away, especially since you mentioned some other ailments but I hope this information is helpful to you. All the best, Sam S. (COPD.Net Team Member).
