On losing a lung

One day I had the usual two lungs; the next day, only one.

I remember the sudden decrease in the quantity of my lungs very clearly. It was towards the start of a long-ish hike across Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Even in August it was cold and misty, as it nearly always is on the Moor. Nothing to see but grass, exposed rock formations, and the occasional sheep. And, if you're lucky, another bunch of hikers -- Exmoor is a popular destination for walkers of all ages and levels of enthusiasm. Nothing much to hear but the occasional bird call; even when you're with other people, it feels somehow insensitive to speak out loud in such an environment. It's an area that appeals, I guess, to those of us who like quiet and isolation. Civilization could end, but hiking on Exmoor would remain the same.

After I'd been plodding uphill for about a mile, I noticed myself breathing hard. To be honest, I'd have been breathing hard, anyway, on such steep, rocky terrain. But this was a wholly new kind of hard breathing: however fast or deep I breathed, it felt as if there were no oxygen in the air. I can't explain it better than that: there was something wrong with the air.

My wife suggested that I might just be feeling the effect of too much moisture in the air, but I noticed that she wasn't puffing like Thomas the Tank Engine. We plodded on, anyway, for another half mile, until the trail got even steeper. At that point, I started to feel a bit, well, peculiar. For the first time ever, I had to abandon a hike and seek refuge in my car. The walk back to the car park was mostly downhill -- I'm not sure I'd have made it otherwise.

In the usual way of middle-aged men everywhere, I ignored this incident. The next day I felt better, and a week later I was hiking again. This time, I did actually get to the top of the hill -- and ahead of younger people in the group. But, once there, I was so unwell I vomited. I was breathing perhaps forty times a minute, to the full extent of my lung capacity. I didn't realize until that day that the very act of breathing could be exhausting.

Still, it was another six weeks before I felt I really ought to seek medical advice and, once I did, I quickly discovered that I'd suffered a huge pulmonary embolism -- a blood clot in the lung circulation. I'd lost the whole of my right lower lobe, and scattered lumps of lung elsewhere. Embolisms aren't all that unusual, unfortunately. What was unusual in my case was that I had no other symptoms -- chest pain and coughing blood are the textbook presentation.

I'm one of those people who has to work hard just not to be fat. So, even in my fifties, I was pretty fit, after a lifetime of regular, hard exercise. So even when I lost half of my lung capacity, I was still basically able to function. I guess I have that to thank for the fact that my life didn't end on that bleak, rocky hillside in the middle of nowhere.

The doctors told me that I shouldn't expect ever to regain my former fitness but, with some rehabilitation, I could still have a normal-ish life. Walking, I was told, was OK, so long as I didn't overdo it. In due course, you'll probably be able to manage a mile or two without ill effects, they said.

Fuck that, I thought. I trained harder than I ever had. I ran with an oxygen saturation monitor, that alerted me whenever I got dangerously hypoxic. I biked, I pushed weights, and I swam harder and longer than ever before. After about six months of this, my lung function became -- nearly average.

Nearly average? It wasn't until this point, I think, that I realized that part of me was broken in a way that could never be repaired. No amount of effort on my part -- or anybody's -- wasn't going to restore me to my previous condition.

That's an odd, unpleasant realization. We're used to all our medical problems being fixable, with a pill, or an injection, or a scalpel. I'd been in a poor state when my gallbladder exploded, but an hour in the operating theatre and I was as good as new. Turns out I didn't need my gallbladder after all.

But your lungs? You can't lose a lung without some loss of function. It won't heal. It won't grow back. Once it's gone, it's gone. For good. And you'll never be the same. I can hike again -- for a few hours in tractable terrain -- but I won't be running cross-country trails any more. When I cycle, I have to get off and push my bike uphill.

Of course, at some level I realize that many people have this experience, and at a much younger age than I was. I'm acutely aware of my many blessings, and of the superlative good fortune I've enjoyed, through no merit of my own. On balance, I really have nothing to complain about.

And, yet...

To be diminished in this way -- even a comparatively minor way, set against what many people endure -- is a constant reminder of my fragility, of the fragility of all life. Even though I'd worked hard to achieve my modest fitness, I still took it for granted, still saw it as something that was my right. But we can take nothing for granted: our fortunes can change in an instant, for no reason we can discern, perhaps for no reason at all.

So suck in a good lungful of air. Feels good, doesn't it?

Make the most of it.

Published 2026-02-19, updated 2026-02-19

On losing a lung

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