22 y/o coughing up blood, CF & CFRD & newly living away from home.

[isabella Mendoza]

I'd appreciate any thoughts. My 22 y/o son apparently is healthy, but suddenly started coughing up blood at school on Friday. He is living with new roommates (grrrrr) and away from home for the first time. He says he feels good. He is eating, taking his meds, doing treatments, but resisting doing his Cayston, I personally think he is embarrassed to do too much in front of his roommates, although he does have his own room. He does not have his own bathroom, and the kitchen is small. He is lying about his roommates smoking in his presence, I am pretty sure that they do. Other than that, they are good roommates, no drunken parties, hard working students. He is about 60 miles from home. He has our only car, so we are on foot. Obviously it is terribly stressful to think he may be very sick and bleeding and we CAN'T get to him. There is no decent public transportation in our area.

 

[Printer]

Coughing up small quantities of blood is very normal. If the quantity, on any one episode, gets to a cupful he should go to the ER at the nearest CF Center.

Bill

 

[Melissa75]

Being around smokers is bad news and a likely cause of his hemoptysis. He may have to figure this out on his own though. Independence is glorious but if it lands him in the hospital, it won't feel like independence anymore. I'm sorry your hands are tied and that he has this to deal with when trying to live on his own. ((hugs))

 

[kbkbkb]

Not too long ago, I was in the same situation your son is in. For me, I wanted to be independent and truthfully, I was a little resistant to parental "suggestions" regarding my health, even if I knew it was for my own good. I wanted to be independent. The best thing for me was to have a good relationship with the CF team back home while at college and to take care of problems on my own. I often wouldn't even mention any issues with my parents. Coughing up blood and inhaling smoke is not good, but he probably knows that. I'm not sure I have any advice for you as I am not a parent, but on the other side. I guess I would hope that he would establish good communication with his CF doc, so that when issues do arise, he will not hesitate to call them.

 

[John89]

Hi Isabella - I just recently graduated college and experienced the same thing (hemoptysis) for the first time a year ago (when I was 22 -ironically). I followed up with my doctors immediately, as I was concerned since it was the first time I'd coughed up blood, and found that it is relatively normal and nothing to worry about, but rather monitor. It's more than likely that it's a damaged airway (1 of many thousands) that just happened to flare up. Our airways unfortunately get put through the ringer as a result of having ongoing infections and hemoptysis is a result of that. It's happened to me half a dozen times since and I tend to notice it more when I do hypertonic saline or pulmozyme - so I've dramatically reduced those treatments.

Help: You can take Vitamin K supplements which help CF'ers with blood clotting and make sure he keeps up with Cayston and any other infection fighting antibiotics or treatments. Also, although smoking isn't good to be around, I confidently say that is not the cause of the hemoptysis.

 

[trainlikeme]

Hi there!

Coughing up a bit of blood really sucks. For me, it happened a lot during boxing training. A simple cough would break a few blood vessels, and voila - out comes the scary blood! If there are smokers around him, anything that will cause him to cough that's not CF related has a chance of re-opening the coughing-up-blood issue.

James Cameron
www.Facebook.com/CFfiles