78 year old Australian. Looking after husband with IPF.
Hi Mary how can we help you? x
I don't understand? What is IPF?
Idiopathic Pulmunory Fibrosis. Idiopathic means the cause is unknown and most people's are. Pulmunory Fibrosis is a serious lung disease.
Thanks for the explanation, I do know about pulmonary fibrosis but didn't recognise the initials. I know someone who died of this not long ago, a matter of months after diagnosis, and it was believed he'd developed it from working with and handlling wild birds for many years.
I know someone too who recently died of it but he had it for a number of years.
I guess it's like all the COPD group of diseases, it obviously depends on the stage at which it's diagnosed. Lots of people cough and wheeze for years before they consult a doctor and get a diagnosis.
An acquaintance of mine (not too bright) told me the other day she doesn't have emphysema any more because she doesn't get breathless walking uphill - turned out she'd stopped walking uphill and was fooling herself she was cured!
And many do go but get dismissed as just a stupid smoker, therefore go away and die, we don't care. Or they are an ex smoker - well it's just the result of smoking for so many years.
I was reading somewhere that the lung cancer survival rates in the UK are near the bottom and I am not surprised.
If any medical person responded to me in that insulting and dismissive way I'd report them: I've never heard of that sort of response, you must have been very unlucky.