What does shortness of breath mean to you?

• By CarolJean65
• Reply 3340162
• September 1, 2012 at 8:46 pm
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I will be interested in what others have to say as I too have wondered how to answer that question .. and the docs always ask it!! I've decided that I get short of breath at times when I'm walking and trying to talk as well. I notice it because I have to consciously breathe while talking. But I agree with you that it can be hard to actually decide if it's "SOB" or not. If I wasn't talking would I recognize it, or would I just not be SOB? Thanks for asking .. I thought I was the only one with that problem

• By LadybuginGeorgia
• Reply 3340165
• September 1, 2012 at 8:52 pm
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It is all of the above plus whatever else causes you to struggle with your breathing. I hate it when someone insists on talking when I need a moment of quiet in order to recover. Then they look at you as if you are crazy and wonder what's the matter, even if you tell them you need to catch your breath. Folks are so weird - that is all of them but me (lol).

• By Dootles
• Reply 3340459
• September 1, 2012 at 11:35 pm
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I say it is when you just struggle to breathe right, and mean what ever is right for you. If it feels strange then it is. I know ive gotten short of breath feeling like im just breathing heavy or sometimes i get like that feeling of i just cant catch my breath. Again i think if it feels weird or not right, then it isnt right. Of course it that makes sense. LOL!

• By ladyincal
• Reply 3340528
• September 2, 2012 at 12:25 am
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I have wondered the same. I was so short of breath for so long, I forgot what is the correct way to breathe. I try to get myself to relax and breath slower, but there are times I can't catch my breath. Walking up and down the stairs and around the apartment complex where I live is my limit. Can't believe about a month ago I was walking at least a mile. One day I will get it back, I can only hope.

• By Mumof3-73
• Reply 3341009
• September 2, 2012 at 9:26 am
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Even though I can breathe fully in and out, it seems like I'm not getting enough air. Great question.

• By yarnkitty
• Reply 3341011
• September 2, 2012 at 9:27 am
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For me, when I am short of breath, I notice breathing more deeply and faster than usual. My breathing usually isn't labored, I'm just more conscious of it. I notice it sometimes when I walk and can't finish a sentence without taking a breath. Sometimes after climbing stairs I have to just stand and breath for a couple minutes to get caught up. I don't feel distress with it.

• By DeeDeeto3
• Reply 3341024
• September 2, 2012 at 9:32 am
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I have to agree with all of the above. It happens to me at times while talking or walking a lot. It's the worst when I get upset and usually reaches the point of the dry cough (and a message to our loved ones, it never helps to preach about calming down when this happens). I have also started working on deep breathing and relaxation techniques but isn't always as successful as I would like.

• By moxxxxxxxxxx
• Reply 3341344
• September 2, 2012 at 11:32 am
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Shortness of breath was one of my main symptoms and was treating it as asthma until I was referred to a cardiologist. I have non ischemic cardiomyopathy, no other heart diseases or other illnesses. I get SOB on exertion, if I talk too much, get upset, if I'm tired. Mine is feeling like I can't get a full breath. WHen it happens I start breathing more which I think causes me to hyperventilate and feel dizzy. The more I focus on my breathing when this is happening the worse it is. If I go to bed or distract myself by reading or doing an activity it seems to resolve. I also attend cardiac rehab and this has been a tremendous help with my breathing. I was afraid to exercise because I got out of breath so easily and the nurses really helped me understand what was going on and pushed me to exercise. When I started rehab I couldn't walk on the tread mill for 1 minute withoug getting short of breath and tired. I am now up to 30 minutes and can do more. I highly recommend rehab it has really helped me with my breathing. I had to ask my doctor for rehab. I think it is typically only prescribed for people who have had heart attacks and surgeries.

• By talithaheart
• Reply 3342232
• September 2, 2012 at 6:02 pm
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Thank you so much for your replies! I really appreciate it. I am glad to know I am not the only one who has struggled with this wonderment. :)

• By crazylena
• Reply 3349059
• September 5, 2012 at 9:34 am
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I do feel more labored breathing more often when I go upstairs now but the biggest thing for me is that I just feel like I can never get a full breath in. I feel like I gasp alot. Especially at night when I first lay down. If I can get a good full breath in then the symptom usually calms down a little.

• By cajngrl
• Reply 3350473
• September 5, 2012 at 6:49 pm
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For me, it feels as if I can never get a good cleansing breath when I have a bout of SOB. Like I cannot make my body satisfied with the breaths....if that makes sense to anyone that is. My sob is typically accompanied by a little or a lot of angina. I have been tested and so farm, nothing has shown up on tests to indicate that the shortness of breath is a condition of anything in particular.

• By moxxxxxxxxxx
• Reply 3350821 · In reply to 3350473 by cajngrl
• September 5, 2012 at 9:01 pm
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cajingrl,

What is causing yourSOB? I don't understand.

• By cajngrl
• Reply 3350896
• September 5, 2012 at 9:30 pm
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Since the beginning of this year, I have been experiencing shortness of breath and angina when exercising. As soon as I mentioned this to my cardio doc, he immediately ordered an angiogram to see if there was blockage. All tests came out negative however. I had a massive heart attack 3 years ago that left me with severe left ventricular damage. This is the pumping side of my heart. With the amount of damage that my heart sustained, the sob is probably a common occurrence in patients like myself.

• By rudownwithjc
• Reply 3350974
• September 5, 2012 at 9:58 pm
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Honestly, with me I was being told I was short of breath long before I started complaining about it. I guess it was very noticable when I was trying to talk and drs. and nurses would mention it. I think I was just so used to feeling that way that I wasn't paying attention to it most the time. But for me it is the constant inability to catch my breathe. It will end with me huffing and puffing for a few minutes before I get settled down and catch my breath all over again. I can maintain 100% oxygen when I am seated or resting but once I get up and active my oxygen drops really fast. I have no clue how low it will go because they never let it get past 83 before they make me go sit down and put back on my oxygen. So I now have oxygen at home for when I am up and active.

If it were a serious issue I think medical professional would make mention of it over and over and over again. But to that point I wasn't ever sent to a pulmonologist until I was going through tests for bariatric surgery...so even when they notice they don't automatically send you for testing about it. Actually the fact that my oxygen would rebound when seated and resting seemed to be good enough for most of them!?!

There are pluses and negatives for doing the testing to see whats up...if you are like me, NO!!!! not another thing wrong with me:-P Sometimes when I am not feeling good just putting my oxygen on will help me feel better so that is a positive...but the negative is I think we get more focused on our breathing also:-P

• By CarolJean65
• Reply 3357056
• September 7, 2012 at 10:07 pm
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Catching up .. and just read the latest replies. I am reminded of the SOB I had for several months before my diagnosis of DCM and how I excused it by thinking I was just out of shape!! I can now walk a mile at a moderate rate somedays .. very slow on others. Can't wait to get back to swimming and see if I can do more than on length without SOB! I usually swam 30 min without stopping then slowly decreased to just one length. Not sure how I managed to excuse that one by thinking I was out of shape.

• By talithaheart
• Reply 3357148
• September 7, 2012 at 10:52 pm
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LOL.. not going to lie.. now that we all use the acronym for short of breath or what not as SOB.. I trip up on it every time. LOL I realize I'm being totally immature but I have to laugh about something it has been a crappy day)

Ok.. talked to the heart nurse today about this again. I did so because I have "spells" of SOB. See... I had put SOB in the catagory of all the time or never.

Does that make sense?

So when cajngrl mentioned them coming in bouts.. that makes complete sense to me. It was a HUGE lightbulb moment. Also someone else said something along the lines of if it does not feel right it isn't. That seems so simple yet I cannot wrap my head around it. Like it is common sense smacking me in the head but I still cannot grasp it.

When I went into severe heart failure.. I could NOT breathe. I was SOOOOO SOB. I was breathing at the top of my breath.. couldn't exhale well... but I literally questioned what was going on.

I thought it was a panic attack and paced my house.. ran up and down the stairs a few times. :o My drs told me I was lucky I came in when I did. I would have passed out eventually or died. amazing.

So it's not to be taken lightly. I just wish I had it figured out sooner. There were sooo many signs leading up to this.

NOw I just wish I could differentiate between true SOB from heart vs panic vs asthma.

• By r4
• Reply 3359141
• September 8, 2012 at 6:07 pm
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sob to me can be just doing something normal, and all of a sudden I am out of breath and breathing hard.

When I ended up in the er, sob meant that I was trying to breathe in and could not. It was horrible and my whole body and especially my lungs hurt. So I felt generally bad all over, but no sharp pain, just a dull headache (probably from not getting enough oxygen), and a lowering body temp. I never want to feel that bad again, because not being able to breathe was so horrible. I felt that bad for about 5 days, but the breathing treatment and all and taking off 5 days from work helped. At the time I was not yet diagnosed with dcm, not for 4 more years. The next time that I was badly sob was over a prolonged period of months, and I got so bad that I had to plan out how to take a bath and get dressed, because I did not have the energy to do it in a normal length of time. By that time I had been diagnosed for 5 years and had had a defibrillator implanted, and I had built up edema without realizing it - I went in for a cardio visit in the summer and weighed more than I had ever weighed in my life. After 6 weeks at home and resting in the spring, I lost 11 pounds. Because my highest weight was 171, nobody realized that I was putting on edema, not just fat - I had gotten the dimply look on my tummy and I did not know what that meant.

Now, since I am at home so much more, I do not get extremely sob, because I am not making the kind of efforts that I was when I was working. And when I walk up a flight of stairs, I walk slowly so that I do not get very sob. However doing things for the first time I will get sob until I figure out how to pace myself. But not like sob where your vision blurs and you cannot get a breath - not that kind because right now I am stable.

Being short of breath is scary at its worst - and I went into the er remembering what my mom had always told me about her mom's several years before dying of what seemed like emphysema, "You do not want to die of emphysema - it is a horrible way to go". I have decided that my mom SHOULD have said, "you do not want to die of chf". I was SO scared that I had somehow developed emphysema, and I could not figure out how, since I am not a smoker nor do I live with smokers as my grandmother did.

So, once I got a defibrillator, I did ask myself if I had eliminated sudden cardiac arrest as one of the ways I would die as a chf patient and had just narrowed the choice down to ... dying with no breath. Because of that thought, I work very hard to live well and stay active and stay stable. I do not want to die struggling to breathe, I want to die thinking about how well my heart and brain have worked despite limitations to enable me to live a good life! And I know that I may still die struggling to breathe, but I want to die at peace with the universe.

I am sorry to be so serious, but thinking about being short of breath is scary to me!

Love to all here,
Ruth

• By r4
• Reply 3359298
• September 8, 2012 at 7:30 pm
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yes, talithaheart, your description sounds like a serious bout of sob. I m so sorry!

I know what you mean about distinguishing between panic attacks, asthma attack, and chf sob. CHF SOB can be frequently misdescribed as asthma - I have been given much sympathy for my "asthma" when I was out somewhere and got sob. Making the diagnosis can be time-consuming. I went to an allergist and ended up with a cardiologist ten months later, and the allergist had to tell me that I did not have anything that I needed an allergist for, although I might as my dcm progressed. When I say that it is chf and NOT asthma, the person usually gets a look of disbelief on their face.

Regarding panic attacks, I have NEVER thought I had panic attacks, but others have! It has caused some delay sometimes in getting treatment. I think part of the problem is that chf tends to produce bodily reactions which ARE panic attacks, you know the "fear or flight" thing. So a chf patient has to make himself/herself THINK and try to figure out what is going on, and then start telling the caretaker and medical team. When you start describing what is going on, a cardiac team can make the necessary differentiations. They will also use their observations of you as you talk to them - breathlessness, skin color, demeanor, as well as medical tests and bloodwork all get included.

My advice which I live by is to begin to be very careful what you ingest, so that you can tell them that you are/are not a smoker, a drinker of alcohol, and EXACTLY what drugs you take, and also how much liquid you take in and how much you eat. If you are being careful about food intake and have gained weight, maybe that is edema, even if you only weigh as much as a tiny bird, or as much as Big Bird! And do your best to be exact.

Good luck to you as you sort this out! What you do want to do is to do everything you can to deal with being sob with as few medical measures as possible. The fewer medical needs you have, the easier it will be to be comfortable - and you will STILL have medical needs.

Love to you,
Ruth

• By moxxxxxxxxxx
• Reply 3359473
• September 8, 2012 at 9:00 pm
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Thnak you r4. I agree with you.

• By Mommy2TnL
• Reply 3359801
• September 8, 2012 at 11:40 pm
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talithaheart LOL at your SOB immaturity :) Every time I write SOB in my medication journal I always ended up smirking. I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds humor in that.

As for describing SOB, it really has changed for me over the years. In high school, while playing basketball I began my faulty heart journey, but didn't know realize it yet. Those episodes would leave me completely unable to catch my breath. People kept asking if I was hyperventilating or if I had asthma. It never happened outside of basketball, until recently. My new experience with SOB has been feeling like I'm not getting a full amount of oxygen with my normal breath, leading me to take more and often sigh as well. It generally happens after some exertion, like standing, lifting, walking, and definitely walking uphill or stairs. It's not as bad as hyperventilating, but it's not a comfortable breathing pattern. This was a question I had about 6 months ago, I'm glad I wasn't the only one wondering :)