Doctors!!!

I've had this respiratory thing for several weeks now and went to my primary on Jan 13. He put me on an antibiotic and a nasal spray and told me to use my "rescue" inhaler four times a day. I got immediate relief.

I went back to him on Jan 27 and he did a PFT (pulmonary function test - you take a deep breath and expel it hard and fast into a device that calculates FVC ("forced vital capacity") and FEV1 ("forced expire volume in the first second"). Then he calculated the significant ratios FEV1/FVC and FEV1/predicted FEV1. The predicted FEV1 comes from a formula that is derived statistically from clinical tests of healthy people. It depends on age, height, gender and ethnicity. I found a paper by Hankinson (“Spirometric Reference Values from a Sample of the General U.S. Population”, JOHN L. HANKINSON, JOHN R. ODENCRANTZ, and KATHLEEN B. FEDAN, AM J RESPIR CRIT CARE MED 1999;159:179–187 should you care to look it up!) and he has the most complex equation because it also uses the square of the age and the square of the height in the calculation.

To make a long story short, my ratios are

FEV1/FVC 0.816
FEV1/predicted FEV1 0.793

However, my primary made a miscalculation and came up with 0.70 and 0.73, respectively. That he said is stage II COPD!!!

Stage I COPD has ratios of 0.80 or higher and less than 0.70, respectively.

So despite his diagnosis, I do not have COPD.

The question is, do I tell him? :-)

In the long view, it probably doesn't matter because COPD is not curable and he will probably then get on my back about losing weight and exercising! I am limiting my between-meals eating and sticking to just breakfast and dinner, and I'm doing Cathy's back exercises but I should get on the stationary bike and the exercise machine.

P.S.: I'm feeling much better now and have just about stopped using my rescue inhaler.