Posted on 12/07/2018 5:16:08 PM PST by BenLurkin
A 36-year-old man has died after suffering from chronic heart failure and coughing so severely that he spit out a bright red blood clot perfectly-shaped like the airway passages of his right lung’s bronchial tree.
The unidentified patient was receiving treatment in the intensive care unit at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, according to a Nov. 29 article in the New England Journal of Medicine.
During the week of his hospitalization, the man’s cough progressed to coughing up blood and phlegm. And, during a rather extreme hack, he coughed up “an intact cast of the right bronchial tree,” the article stated.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
[Note to self: if a big clot reaches the lung, cough harder...real hard!] ;-)
Thought the top of my face just came off. Again with the other nostril. After that, I just had to blow that damn things out. Looked like I did a sacrifice in the sink.
Hard time imagining semi-congealed blood holding shape like that.
I'd guess a ruptured right-sided bronchial artery. These are small arteries supply the bronchial tree and one ruptured into a right sided bronchus, filling and backfilling up the right bronchial tree with bright red blood where it then clotted.
Looks like a cast of the bronchi to the right middle lobe and right lower lobe.
Ugh!
(Maybe that’s because I just ate...)
My brother-in-law went through a long spiral (heavy-heavy smoker for thirty years, probably 1.5 packs a day). Last year, he would go into these massive coughs. At the end, doctor said he coughed himself to death.
Ugh! Spent 12 days intubated in a trauma unit. Had
tubes sticking me everywhere imaginable. Not including
helicopter ride bill was $285K. This was in 2010.
AIDs...TB....we will never be told.
.....and thank God for you..
Medical prices are fiction. Until they are not, there is no hope of controlling health care costs.
The other day, I was reviewing my Medicare Advantage plan online. There was a prescription drug charge at CVS for $319 for 90 days' worth of atorvastatin (aka Lipitor). Blue Cross had hammered it down to $35, of which I co-paid $9. It's a joke.
Blue Cross's online system is sufficiently underpowered (it doesn't reveal the drug, just the date) that I had to correlate the date of the payment with my online account at CVS to conclude it was the atorvastatin, not the levothyroxine. I had initially assumed it was the levothyroxine, but that one was only $64 for 108 pills, of which I paid $9.
An online search reveals lots of prices for the drug. (If you don't have powerful insurance, avoid CVS!)
March 23-April 14, 2017, I spent 23 days at York Hospital, in ICU, CCU, private room, round-the-clock nurses, many CT-Scans, 4 endoscopies, for Acute/Severe Pancreatitis, AFIB (heart); 5 stents in heart arteries (too weak from Pancreatitis for bypass op); the total bill was $887,500. I died 2x, they brought me back, and I lost 131-lbs (265 to 134).
Then, 2mos later, I was at PSU-Hershey Hospital/Medical Center for GI specialists for 11 days in ICU with 9 endoscopies, 4 stents in stomach to drain pseudo-cyst on Pancreas (ERCP Op), lost 11-lbs; total bill was over $112,000.
At both hospitals, the Drs and Nurses and support staff were incredible, but God wasn’t ready for me just yet; I’m still in “His waiting room”.
In all cases, MediCare and Geisinger Gold have negotiated down the prices, and paid ~98-99%.
I cringe at how dumb I was to attribute the cough to something else.
If I had gone home when he was in the PACU (believe the ENT had left the hospital already) and discharged him to the ward.... shudder to think.
Mucus may give the blood some “body”.
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