Neglected health catches up
I was once calling upon my younger brother for a couple of days when I observed that he would start to pant and wheeze. This would happen while George would be pottering round his plants or cooking a meal. In the nights I could often hear him having a coughing fit, I would then get up to give him a glass of water in order to calm down his coughs. He looked so unusually exhausted and tired that it started to make me anxious about George’s health. When I touched upon his health with George he just laughed it off. But when I noticed his clubbed fingers I nagged George constantly to take an appointment with a lung specialist. But he wasn’t going to do it so I took the appointment for him at a local hospital.
Meeting the specialist
I drove a reluctant George and myself to the local hospital for our scheduled appointment. After a long wait, we finally were ushered into the lung specialist’s office. The doctor thoroughly examined George and told him that he suspected George to have developed chronic asthma. However just to be on the safe side, he wrote down a couple of tests for George so that he could confirm his diagnosis of asthma. Those tests were pulmonary function tests and chest X-rays.
What the tests showed
When the second appointment time came I had gone back to my home in San Francisco but I called George a day earlier to remind him of his appointment with the lung specialist the next day. I called up George the next evening and he sounded depressed and down, I knew in my heart then that there was some bad news. According to the test results George had asbestosis. Both of us had no clue what it was. I consoled George over the telephone and after putting down the phone I immediately switched on my PC to surf the net to get as much information as possible about this strangely named condition ‘asbestosis’.
Internet gives clarity
According to my net research I found out that asbestosis is a manifestation of breathing difficulties that is caused by inhaling fibers and specks of asbestos. Those fibres become fixed in the tiny and fragile air pockets of the lungs known as alveoli. Alveoli are branches of airways known as bronchioles. The fine hair like structures called cilia that are found in the airways and act as brooms as they sweep away dust particles and other microorganisms, are unable to breakdown the asbestos fibers and specks. These asbestos specks and fibers then little by little scar the lung tissues over a time period of two to three decades and eventually destroy its functioning capacity which is mainly exchange of gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide.
Since long time exposure to asbestos led to asbestosis and George used to work in a power plant that had asbestos, that is how he eventually developed asbestosis and its associated symptoms.
By my brother’s side
Reading all this information on the internet I could understand George’s situation. I realized why he was depressed and distressed. I therefore decided to be by his side by visiting him again and give him the moral support that he needed. The lung specialist had informed him that his condition would worsen. However the doctors said to George that if they began his treatment right away, his condition could be managed and slow down the worsening of his lungs. |
