shortly after my last blog post, I took the DH to the doctor so he could discuss with her some issues he was having
frankly, I was thinking we were going to be told he was starting into some sort of memory issues, but it turns out he was not getting enough oxygen, so he is now using oxygen all the time
this is the concentrator that he is tethered to when we are at home, and there are two small canisters that can be filled from it that provide him with oxygen when we are out of the house (these last about 2 1/2 hours each)
while his doctor and his insurance would have been happy to allow him to have a small portable oxygen concentrator that would have allowed us the freedom to travel further, it does not properly activate for him when he breathes in, so it is not an option
meantime, he's been through a series of tests to examine the possibility that there is an underlying, treatable condition that would explain the scarring in his lungs that is causing the symptoms, only to discover that it appears to be idiopathic interstitial lung disease
it may be because he had bulbar polio when he was 12, it may be aggravated by living in a home as a child that was heated with coal and had parents that smoked, it may be added to by the environment he worked in that involved extremely toxic chemicals -- it may be all of those things, they just don't know
the good news in this is that while many folks diagnosed with this have some quickly progressing issue, he seems to be much more stable -- his scarring has progressed very slowly over the four years that elapsed between the CT scans
because there is no established cause, there is also no real treatment -- he will continue to be on oxygen and his condition will be monitored
we're trying to adjust to this new "wrinkle" in things
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