New Member

Hi Nick, sorry to hear you have joined the bronchiectasis club.

Your consultant will give you some ideas on how to control it: breathing exercises etc 

i tend to stay away from dairy products, they don't help.

walking and swimming are the best to make you feel good and keep the cough 

under control. 

There are breathing exercises online. You can look them up and start now.

Stay away from sick people & where they congregate and especially stay away from children now if you're in the northern hemisphere. Wash or sanitize your hands after all contact because: part of your lungs no longer functions as it should in terms of moving stuff up and out. "Stuff" here means phlegm you produce and also things you inhale, pollutants/germs /pollen, etc. In that area is the perfect breeding ground trifecta, moist, dark and warm.

Be careful about exercise until you know more. Or, go for a 1-2 mile walk and end up 2 hours later in the ER, not once, not twice but 3 times. One time I got admitted for 4 days. Like you, I started with pneumonia and things went on from there. When I finally saw my pulmonologist, he banned me from walking more than around the house in normal living -- not kidding -- until i got better. I was sick from July '16 -May '17 because i just would not listen. I now spend an hour in a therapy pool, working out gently. Not allowed to go faster than 2mph on water treadmill nor longer than 10-15 minutes at a time.

You have stayed infection free so you're better off than I was. Drink tons of water but small amounts at a time -- your lungs need it.

Good luck

I think exorcise wise it might vary from person to person. I was told to do as little as possible activity wise and I was admitted for a week in November because like the poster above I didn’t listen and carried on walking the dog, daily trips to shops. I feel s**t when husband has to come in from work and do this stuff so was pushing myself as I felt like a burden.  

 I’m still struggling with coming to terms with Fatigue and lung pain, the other stuff I can handle but those are what makes it hard for me to manage day to day. I can’t sleep due to pain. (Hence me posting at 2am) The wheezing and bringing up the gunk is unpleasant but constant pain and fatigue is what does my head in.  

My consultant is  amazing though and gave me leaflets and websites and doesn’t dance about the bush. I appreciate being told how it is and it’s knowing that this won’t go away that I struggle with, that I’ll always have pain and fatigue.  She said I’ve had this way before my pneumonia and knowing weight loss and fatigue can be a symptom I think it’s been six years. People thought I had an eating disorder when I went to gp about that, gained all my weight back now  

Avoiding sick people is good advice. I’ve come down with some nasty bug this week despite staying at home almost all the bloody time and have been in bed most of the last three days feeling worse than I did when I had pneumonia so I’m proper sorry for myself  this week  

Sorry to whinge on your thread, feeling low at the moment and wimped out of starting a thread for myself.  Hope your bronchiectasis doesn’t make your radiotherapy harder than it normally would be too. 

Hi Nicky

I was diagnosed with a lung lymphoma 4 years ago and received a course (about 8 sessions I think) of radiotherapy. It was relatively lightweight and I can't recall it taking anything out of me - ie no exhaustion, sickness etc. The radiotherapy was a success but I was still producing lots of mucus and a bit of coughing which is when my consultants (had consultants from various disciplines as part of Papworth Hospital's lung defence team approach to non-obvious cases) decided I has bronchectasis. So I was in fact a bronchX sufferer when I had the radiotherapy.

Your radiotherapy may be stronger or your reaction may be more pronounced but I would not start form an assumption that it's going to be horrible. I recall the various guidance I read at the time saying that tiredness can be an issue but that seemed to be mostly related to the tiredness of travelling. I was lucky that my treatment was at a hospital only 30 minutes drive away and I felt no issues that would have impacted my driving. Seems like if you have long travel then consider taking steps to reduce its impact if you have the financial resources to use taxis/hotels etc.

As a more general point don't let the postings on health web sites like this wind you up. In my experience posters who come on are very often the ones who have symptoms that are on the more severe side. There is of course good reason why that would be so and I certainly do not object to seeing their experiences as they are nearly always very helpful, but I do have a concern that newbies might get an overly pessimistic outlook for development of their disease. There are many of us bronchX sufferers who do not relate to the degree of suffering and life-deflection portrayed. I have every sympathy with them; if for mo other reason that who knows what the future brings for any chronic disease sufferer?!

PS - maybe talk to a general medic or pharmacist sooner rather than later about taking a mucolytic. For most people, including us 'mild-ies' they are helpful in thinning and shifting gunk and for most people they seem to be very low impact drugs. The two generic mucolytics used most are carbocysteine (UK and some parts of europe) or acetylcysteine (US/Germany) - locational indicators are just generic indicators of geographical diversity; many countries have both available