Full Pulmonary Function Test

I got to sit in a phone booth and breathe into a tube. Over. And over. And over again.

For the sake of information I did what I know is one of my triggers...I breathed hard. Really hard. Several times.

When you do a pulmonary function test they have you breathe out all your air as fast and as hard as you can, and then keep breathing for 6 seconds, then breathe in a full breath. They measure all sorts of things, volume in, volume out, expiration rate, inspiration rate (eureka!? no, not that kind of inspiration). I've been doing Buteyko breathing exercises for almost a year, working on not breathing lots of air and here I was sucking in and blowing out as much as I could. Definitely not in keeping with Buteyko!

Then they give you a drug that open up your breathing passages, albuterol in my case, and do the test again and compare the results. If the drugs help, you have asthma (well, maybe). Anyone who knows me knows it took a lot for me to suck in drugs for the sake of research!

They also did a test where they have you pant against resistance that can tell them if you have "air trapping" where you aren't getting your breath because you have stale air stuck in your lungs.

I found out from the tech at the time that I definitely don't have air trapping, so that's good. And the albuterol did help a bit with my "small airways", whatever the hell that means. And she saw an indication of vocal chord dysfunction, which is an interesting piece of information, will have to research that now.

Pulmonologist reviews the rests, and the results of the echocardiagram next Wednesday. Will get complete answers to things like what does improved function in small airways mean? and do I have vocal chord dysfunction (certainly talking is one of my major stressors)? Could I be getting close to some sort of answer? Should be interesting.