Pleurisy.
Quite a common condition I'm led to believe. I aggrivated mine because I wasn't aware of it.

I had no idea I was even ill. In fact - I was on top form. I'd been landscaping my garden with lost of manly pick axe work. I'd also been arsing around at the park with my kids (chin-ups are a lot harder after a 10 year and 5 stone break). I suspect it may have been one or both of these activities that did it for me.

I remember coming home and a fever coming on really quickly. I went to bed shivering violently with cold sweat pissing out of me. When I woke up I couldn't breathe. I've never had panic attacks but the feeling of suffocation tends to make one rather jittery.

Breathe all the way out - no ALL the way. Now inhale to about 5% of your lung capacity imagining that any further will feel like being stabbed between the ribs with a rusty exhaust pipe. I was bedridden for best part of a week. Every little movement causes a major fucking ouch. Getting up for a piss is like running a marathon in a barbed wire vest.

I never want that to happen again. That's why, like the dopey twat I am I'm still on twenty a day to keep any pesky lung infections at bay!

GC
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Sun 1 Aug 2010, 0:41, 2 replies)

it's horrible, isn't it?
you feel like you're going to die, every gasped half-breath is as if you've been kicked by a donkey and, no matter how you try, you just can't relax. after a few days of very little sleep, you'd happily kill to be rid of it, if you had the strength.
when my doctor told me i had it(same as you, no warning), i said "what is this, the fucking 19th century?"
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sun 1 Aug 2010, 21:05, closed)

To quote The Meaning of Liff:
BRISBANE
A perfectly resonable explanation (Such as the one offered by a person with a gurgling cough which has nothing to do with the fact that they smoke fifty cigarettes a day.)
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 5 Aug 2010, 13:05, closed)