Lung Inflammations

Lung inflammations are typical when changing the environmental temperature or walking or running while breathing through the mouth and thereby allowing microbes to incubate directly into the lungs. Most of the troubles stem from the fact that people tend to delay treatment, at times thinking that the bug will go away and that they'll "roughen it out", or sometimes even being too exigent and wanting to consult a medic before deciding on medicine. Whilst the latter is always the best option if there is a doctor readily available, when in need or in a survival context, self-medication for this condition is fairly easy to accomplish.

The typical forewarning symptom is very slight difficulty (or better described as, heaviness) of breath followed by a very mild feeling of scratching inside the lungs. The lesser the scratching feeling, the earlier it is in the whole illness and treatment cycle. First, the shock doctrine applies just as much as it does to colds with the mention that symptoms that warn the individual of an "onsetting" condition, will not go away by "roughing it out", ever! Lung bugs, just like cold bugs do not and will not "change their minds" about taking over the human body. If the scratching symptom is felt in the lungs while coughing, "waiting a while longer to see what happens" will always lead to a full-on infection with a coarse cough and heavy scratching.

The most common treatment is based on expectorants, and the typical ailment is the world-wide well-known cough syrup that is produced under very many brands and with little additional perks each. The taste is typical and almost identical to a glass of ouzo after the glass turns white when pouring water. The taste can be described as a "licorice"-"minty" flavor with a lingering aftertaste that is extremely characteristic and distinct. Cough-syrup is available over the counter, is typically very cheap, is sold over the counter without any approval necessary and works wonders most of the time. However, not being proper medicine that contains an "active agent" but is instead just a "bronchiole dilatory substance", in other words, eases and encourages coughing by making the canals/airways within the lung expand, the treatment can take longer than 5 days especially if the treatment is not started in time.

A little step-up from cough syrup, is something like ACC that are effervescent tablets that can be dissolved in water and that do not have the Ouzo taste but also act by encouraging coughing in order to clear the lung. ACC is also a pharmaceutical product and to be found in a more "concentrated" format such that compared to cough syrup it will yield results much faster than the "natural" cough syrup (ie: the difference between taking compressed aspirin tablets developed by concentrating acetilsallicillic acid in a small pill, or going the natural way, finding some willow trees, ripping off the bark and making some tea, both of which yield the same acetilsallicillic acid just that the pharmaceutical product is specifically concentrated and properly weighed).

Lung inflammations almost always are backed by the good old cold symptoms such that all the cold buddies apply and are welcome to be combined with the expectorant. Fever is absolutely guaranteed after only 1 day of perceived lung scratching and it will not go away on its own nor treated by the cough syrup or focused expectorants like ACC such that Iburprofen/Nurofen is always good to keep the fever in check, along with the rest of the cold medicine to increase the QoL during the illness cycle.

The "cure" is felt when the cough breaks completely, so the withdrawal of the condition is counter-intuitive: when the affected individual is not coughing but feels a light scratch, the full-blown inspection is about to start and when the "cough breaks", meaning that the infected individual is coughing and even expectorating mucus from the lungs, that's when it's starting to heal up and the effects of the drug is felt.

The illness cycle is also about 5 days and after proper medication is started with the cough syrup and the cold buddies after 3 days the condition should start to get better. The usual rules apply: after one week, if the condition is not healed completely, it's time to go to to the doctor. Similarly, if the cough gets worse and the scratching becomes unbearable during the treatment, it's also time to see the doctor. Any indication of blood in the coughing is a marker for something too serious to be handled by cough syrup but a good judgement has to be applied because it might be due to a blood vessel bursting during coughing. In any case, if blood shows up during the cough, it's time to go to the doctor.

Finally, it is possible to add antibiotics to the mix, after all tuberculosis was treated by penicillin historically, so a modern wide-spectrum antibiotic like amoxicillin will definitely take care even of the worst of bugs like tuberculosis. Of course, the common mistake here that does lead to serious conditions like tuberculosis is the time the patient takes to either go to the doctor or start medication. However, the usual sparing usage of antibiotics should be maintained due to the human body building up immunities to antibiotics.