I spent the day researching vocal cord dysfunction because last night Bill couldn’t breath and it was horrible. I even had 911 on the phone asking for an ambulance before he was able to get a breath and he told me later that this had happened several times before with him, but this is the first time since we’ve been together. He has asthma or so he was diagnosed with many years ago and always keeps an inhaler close by, but this wasn’t an asthma attack.

He was at work years ago and they thought he was choking and his co-worker did the Heimlich maneuver on him and it opened up what he says is a flap, he said it closed up and he couldn’t breath in. I had no clue what I was looking for today until I ran across a very informative website called  CAN’T BREATHE? SUSPECT VOCAL CORD DYSFUNCTION! so I spent the day reading and then doing other research on other websites.

Apparently you don’t use medication to treat this, but you do have to see a speech pathologist to learn a different way of breathing and other techniques. After doing a lot of reading I’m thinking that he has been so stressed over his eyes that he may have brought this episode on. It was horrible and scared the crap out of me. I better learn how to do the Heimlich maneuver Bill said he didn’t care if I cracked his ribs so long as he could breath.

On the website above she even shares some tips she learned on how to breath which I’m going to make Bill try and practice so he wont panic if this happens again. More doctors and emergency teams are only recently themselves becoming more aware of  vocal cord dysfunction the main cause of this disorder still remains unknown and to properly diagnose it would be to do a nasal endoscopy during an episode.

I’m sure they would have to trigger an episode in a clinic because unless the passage were to be open as soon as possible I’m quite sure someone could die so screw the endoscopy I’ll be cracking some ribs if this ever happens again and since he wasn’t able to breath in I will definitely have him practise those breathing out exercises so we’ll at least be better prepared.

I also intend to keep a small bottle of water with a sprayer on hand so he can keep his throat moist instead of dry. Got to get back to my researching so I can find more helpful tidbits for Bill, so type at you all later.

Tags: heimlich maneuver, vocal cord dysfunction