Clearly im dying...... Or just a massive hypochondriac

Oh, and im a very low level smoker... im talking on average. one, maybe two a day. If that!

Give up smoking. It is not good for your lungs. 

Sounds like diaphragm spasms to me. I just had the pleasure of several days of same. After a bout of pneumonia. Not fun, but not dangerous in themselves I believe.

I know how you feel - I'm sure I'm a great deal older than you - I'm in my early 60's and I come from a family of hypochondriacs.  So with me and the easy accesibility  the internet offers, I am always on there looking up what might be the cause of every little symptom I have.  I smoked on and off close to a pk. of cigarettes a day for almost 20 years.  It made me feel good and in a way I was deliberately being reckless.  Having depression for most of my adult life made me not care about so many things, so I took up smoking late in life after my kids were grown and had families of their own and I was alone feeling sorry for myself.  Boy what a mistake that was!  For several years I experienced fatique and shortness of breath - told all of my doctors and they all knew I smoked.  Not one of them ever suggested I may be developing a lung problem so I was never sent to get pulmonary function testing.  This went on for years and as I also have Sleep Apnea (diagnosed about 8-9 yrs. ago) and use CPAP nightly and was still very tired during the day I thought maybe I had a heart problem (heart disease runs on both sides of my family), so I had numerous stress/echo tests over the years and besides an irregular heart beat and minor mitral valve problems nothing serious ever came up.  Recently my cardiologist even suggesed I see a psychiatrist because of the anxiety I was having worrying constantly about my health and maybe get on medication. I guess he was tired of me coming in and having tests done that always came up negative. So finally this past February again I mentioned to my sleep doctor (who's also a pulmonologist) about the shortness of breath and fatigue - up till this point all he ever did was check my AHI and kept upping the pressure on my CPAP, but this time he decided to do a chest x-ray and spirometer test (it sure took him long enough to get around to testing me!) To my surprise he blurts out that I have moderate COPD!  I am so angry that testing wasn't done years earlier after all of the trips to doctors, ER's and urgent care centers always complaining of shortness of breath.  So about a month or two after the diagnosis finally hit me I quit smoking cold turkey (April of this year) and haven't picked up one since.  I was put on 2 inhalers - Ventolin and Spiriva and just like that my life did a 180! I'm constantly on the internet reading anything and everything I can about this disease and I've joined several message boards.  I'm scared and know this disease will progressively get worse until I struggle for every breath.  I've quit going out and doing fun things; I've cancelled summer plans, cruises, vacations and I've lost interest in everything because of this disease and my depression has reached an all time high.  I care about nothing anymore, all I do is obsess over what I'll go through as the disease worsens.  So, yes, I do kind of know how you feel, I think I have all of these diseases with every cough, every pain, every headache I get I think it's cancer and that I'm getting close to death.  I lay awake every night worrying, thinking that I need to hurry and have a will made and help my husband learn how to pay the bills and take care of the things I now take care of so he'll be OK when I'm no longer here.  This is how drastically my life changed after the COPD diagnosis - nothing will ever be the same for me ever again.  I don't smile, I don't spend time with my family or my grandchildren, I don't go out and have fun, I just spend my days worrying and preparing to die.

Sorry for going on and on.  I wish I had the few symptons you spoke of as colds, flus and infections can be helped with medication and soon go away. Take care and do all you can to be healthy now so you have no doubts when you get older like me.  I'm living with the "only if's" every day and wonder how much better my life would be if I'd taken better care of my health over the years and never started smoking!  Best of luck with everything!

Same to you Danny. Please seek out a Biofeedback Specialist. Because Dr's & western medicine is getting ridiculous anymore.

You go to the Dr and all they want to do is give you medication that just damages your body somewhere. Google it..... Quantum Biofeedback. They'll definitely find out what's wrong.

Hi Danny.....went down with similar out of the blue three half weeks ago...first felt very tired for few days , then earache and scratchy throat, the achey and cough started, and completely blocked nose, nothing there just felt blocked, tight chested and breathless, after three weeks went to doctor, they sent for X-ray and bloods, and gave me ash a inhalers to help breathe, no explanation as such, just love doctors bed side manner these days, they leave you more worrued than when you go into surgery....awaiting results , still tight chested not coughing as much, aches going, but very very tired, no apoetite....not being much help just letting you know your not alone x