Thank you Natalie. This sounds like my mom. She has emphysema. It is horrific break down of the lungs. Some get it without smoking. She hates herself for ever smoking her first cigarrette. She has it from smoking. She is on oxygen and SEVERAL different kinds of steroids. She literally inhales, snorts, and orally takes all those steriods listed just so she can get by in a day. Her lungs are like strings of tissue now. Eventually the patient with emphysema drowns in their own fluids. Something I do not look forward to watching her endure. So far she is holding her own, but with any cold, or virus, it could take her in a heart beat. We tease her because she was always skinny minnie, but ate like a horse. Now she eats twice as much. She has gained weight and looks better but her face is so bloated. She hates it. If anyone had watched the Jerry Lewis Marathon for MS, that was the effects of way too much steriods. She says she looks like him now. She also gets very depressed, but that also is a side effect from the emphysema. It is interesting to see that too much steroids can cause her depression too. Never thought of that since I see my own daughter go through emotional hell when she has a full week of high doses of steroids for a virus. My mom also fell last year and shattered her leg. She has osteoporosis from not only taking steriods but from also smoking. To anyone out there still smoking, take it from a daugther that is watching her mother die a slow and painful death, STOP IT! There are times she looks like a fish that has been taken out of water. Literally gasping for breath as she collapses to the floor grabbing anything and anyone in sight as if she was going down into a pool of water and drowning. I can’t imagine how horrific the end of her life will be. I can’t tell you enough to STOP smoking if you do.

My daughter is on steroids for asthma too. We swear it changed her OHP levels. Her endo. and asthma doc. swore it wouldn’t. I beg to differ. That is something that I wonder if any other CAH/asthma patient has seen in their own levels as we did in my daughters.

Thanks again, very interesting article!