[Image description: a cartoon image of a translucent sheet draped over a potted plant, with text that says “the ghost of the plant I killed”]

    •  IninewCrow   ( @ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ) English
      2•12 hours ago

      It actually escalates over months or years … my wife had it and since then we’ve learned that any lung infection you get - fungal, bacterial, viral, chemical, mineral - is all like playing a disease lottery. Chances are pretty high for everyone to not get anything and no after effects when you recover. However every once in a while, you get lucky and whatever infection completely screws the immune response in your lungs and it turns into a permanent infection. When that happens, it may or may not be the original infection but it could just be your own immune system that has just lost balance and is now fighting against your own body. Whatever it is, it causes permanent scarring and the scarring grows over time until you lose the ability to breathe and drown to death.

      All because of a chance infection in an unlucky lottery you happen to win.

        •  IninewCrow   ( @ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ) English
          4•11 hours ago

          No, no … don’t worry about it. It’s a condition called Pulmonary Fibrosis and it is actually rare-ish

          It’s also not tied to any one fungus, virus, bacteria or whatever. It’s just a chance infection of whatever kind that invades your lung system, and causes a run-away reaction with your immune system. The infection turns on the immune system and for whatever reason, the immune system goes haywire and can’t turn itself off so it just keeps attacking even after the original infection is gone. It’s common in the lungs because when you think about it and study it, the lungs and lung tissue are very delicate and intricate biology that exists in a very narrow balance between being healthy and abnormal. As soon as you upset that balance, its either very difficult or impossible to get it back.

          Infections like this can be caused by colds and flus but also from funguses and mold and dust spores. A well known condition is called ‘Pigeon Lung’ from pigeon breeders who breathe in a lot of dust from pigeon droppings.

          I have a doctor friend who warned me years ago … ‘do your best to avoid colds, flus, viruses and bacterial infections’ … even if you are fit and healthy and young. Every infection in your lungs is a lottery and if you get lucky and get infected with something that screws up your system, it will affect your life forever.

          My wife got infected with a viral infection on a trip to Morocco about six years ago. We both got sick with it. It was bad but not that bad. I got over it but she just never stopped coughing. A year later she was still coughing and we looked into it and she had lung scarring. The doctors then told us all about these conditions and now she has Pulmonary Fibrosis. She is perpetually coughing, she lives with it but it is a constant worry we have to live with now.

          So next time you go out in public remember that any flu, cold, covid, virus, whatever is a lottery that can screw with your life.