Smokin'

The respiratory therapist just came in to give my dad his nebulizer treatment. He needs it in order to open the bronchial tubes. This allows him to breathe better.

I’ve learned a lot about lungs this week.
The lungs are quite remarkable.

• At the age of 28 or so, everyone’s lung capacity begins to decrease gradually.

• A smoker who quits will gain about seven years of his lung capacity back, but they will never again be at the same level as they were before a person smoked.
• Smoking damages the cilia, which are what help with the secretions produced in the lungs. Non-smokers don’t have to deal with as much mucus, because the cilia are healthy and can handle the secretions.
  
• Smokers get a smoker’s cough in order to get rid of the secretions, because the smoking kills the cilia. This is also why second hand smoke is so bad for a person. It can kill a person’s cilia and cause him/her to get a smoker’s cough, just as if the person was a smoker.
• The alveoli are where the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange takes place in the lungs. When a person has emphysema, the oxygen still goes in but the carbon dioxide can’t get out. This poisonous waste product remains in the body. The alveoli act like rubber bands. When the air goes in, they stretch out. When the air goes out, they return to their original size. This happens each time we breathe. For a person with COPD, when the air goes in, they stretch out, but when the air goes out, they only return to a percentage of their normal size.
• A person with COPD tends to get a distended belly. The diaphragm, a muscle that helps you to breathe, has to work so hard to make up for the inefficiency of the lungs, that it gets bigger and causes the stomach to distend. The diaphragm then takes up too much room, which makes it even more difficult to breathe.

My Dad’s alveoli are at about 25% instead of 100%.
My dad smoked Camels. No filters. For 55 years.

So…when the respiratory therapist came in and asked if my dad was ready for a smoke, I thought He started this mess by smoking cigarettes and is ending it by smoking albuterol and ventolin.

How Ironic.