"We Can't Kill Your Mother" and Other Stories of Intensive Care
by Lawrence Martin, M.D.
Table of Contents

NOTE: "We Can't Kill Your Mother" and Other Stories of Intensive Care can be downloaded in its entirety as an e-book from 1st Books Library ($4.95). The book can also be ordered in trade paperback format for $13.50. For purchasing the e-book or print versions, please go to 1st Books Library and enter part of the book's title or the author in their search engine. Below are the first few paragraphs of THE RED BARON

Hemoptysis. HE-MOP-TUH-SIS. The word means "coughing up blood," one of the most frightening of medical symptoms. Five quarts of blood speed through our lung capillaries every minute, ceaselessly, until we die. The meshwork of capillaries circle and envelope each of the lungs' 300 million air sacs, so that blood is never far from fresh air. All that separates lung blood from lung air is an extraordinary membrane of microscopic thinness and gargantuan proportion. Stretched out in its entirety the membrane's surface area would cover the surface of a tennis court.

Through this diaphanous barrier gases transfer both ways. Fresh oxygen goes from the air sacs into the capillary blood, to be delivered to the rest of the body; unwanted carbon dioxide goes from the blood into the air sacs, and then exhaled. This vital transfer of gases oxygen in, carbon dioxide out is the function of our lungs.

Another, separate flow of blood delivers oxygen and nutrients to the lung tissues themselves. Thus, the lungs contain two supplies of blood, one to take up oxygen for the whole body and give off carbon dioxide, the other to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the lung tissues. This is a complicated affair, but it works beautifully. Physicians hardly ever think about the body's dual blood supply (except in medical school!). If either blood supply leaks through the capillaries the person coughs and then there it is bright red blood.

Hemoptysis is scary, but by no means is it always serious or life threatening. There are several grades. "Mild" hemoptysis may occur from just severe coughing; sometimes people "hack" so hard that capillaries rupture and spill small amounts of blood into the large air passages. The blood gets mixed with phlegm and is expectorated (doctors call this "blood streaking"). The problem invariably goes away when the coughing stops.