(no subject)

[camwyn]

WTC Responder Health Registry folks pinged me today to get me to fill out a form. I thought it was to arrange my next annual exam. Nope, it was about referrals for potential related conditions that turned up at my prior exam. The cough and sinus stuff I understand, but I still have no clue how they decided that I had shown any signs of depression or PTSD, other than possibly having answered that sometimes I had trouble sleeping and some worrying about the future. Come to think of it I may have been tagged for my reaction to my lung exam results; I know I was extremely unhappy about seeing a lung age that was a full eight years older than my physical age.

The form they wanted me to fill out asked when the symptoms started. Most accurate answer I could give 'em was election day 2016. They asked if I'd had any form of treatment or if I'd done anything to address the symptoms myself; 'lifestyle changes' was an available option. I checked the box and said 'adopted an exercise program that involves a great deal of punching and kicking'.

We'll see how that goes over.

Comments

[eor]

Extremely unhappy sounds like a perfectly reasonable response to the lung exam results considering all the stairs and biking you've done. It's not like you've been sitting on the couch smoking unfiltered camels.

I concur on election day 2016. Any coping mechanism that doesn't involve self harm is a valid coping mechanism.

[camwyn]

I know, right? The major things I've done other than breathe Ground Zero dust without a mask for several hours-

(Explanation for those of you not bored to death with my history by now: I was on the first Red Cross response vehicle through the tunnel from New Jersey after the Towers fell. The older Red Cross disaster volunteer in charge of my ERV, Derrick Watkins, was a good man and an experienced disaster responder, but he made one absolutely disastrous judgment call in my estimation, and that was to tell us not to wear face masks because they might scare people or upset them. The masks we had on our truck weren't very good anyway, they were the sort you'd wear to prevent disease transmission, but we handed them out because we didn't have anything else to offer the cops and reporters and other responders. When we ran out of masks to give, Derrick had us give away our own. I didn't get a proper mask until he dragged me down to the Hole itself around 10:30 PM that night, at which point a man in scrubs found me while I was staring at the rebar and flashing lights that were all that remained of a fire engine. The... doctor? EMT? Nurse? I never asked... handed me a NIOSH particulate respirator of the sort you'd buy at Home Depot to keep grit and dust out of your face while working on concrete walls. I wore that the rest of my time in Manhattan that night and the whole day the next day.)

- anyway, the major Lung Bad things I've done other than that have been:

* Rode in an October bicycling event in summertime bike clothes, inhaling way too much cold air and overtaxing myself; a week or so later I wound up with pneumonia, although the Jersey City medical center people gave me antibiotics and sent me home rather than admitting me
* Lived in Jersey City for a few years
* Lived in Hoboken until the end of 2012
* Lived in close proximity to an urban area from 2013 onwards
* Lived very near, but not directly under, the final approaches to a high traffic airport for several years
* Used a great deal of glass and surface cleaner with Clorox to purge my Hoboken apartment of any traces of cat smell or cat germs before I moved out- I don't know if this did anything to me or not but I'm mentioning it in the interests of disclosure

no smoking, no partying, no vaping, no use of other inhalants, no use of aerosol air fresheners. So basically the lung thing is down to 9/11, a post-9/11 bout of pneumonia, and living in urban areas. Regardless, yeah, I would have expected better numbers than that.