A Night of Breathing Difficulties
The other night, around the time we were heading to bed, I started having typical mast cell disease breathing difficulties again only days after another miserable night of breathing difficulties. This is a fairly common symptom for my primary illness so, at this point, common symptoms like breathing problems alone don't raise any red flags. If a second symptoms appears while struggling with the first, then that does raise red flags which indicates the start of a cascading of symptoms and I need to start on emergency medications but that didn't happen the other night. I was just experiencing what I would call and felt were moderate breathing difficulties. Sheila reminded me to check my O2 saturation level... so I did and it was at 87%. That may seem okay and a decent number but it is actually considered very low. They say that normal breathing is in the 98-100% range. "Moderate" breathing difficulties are experienced in the range of ± 94%. Once you get down t