Thank you very much for your responses.

Annie, I don't know what my oxygen saturation was, they didn't tell me, they just said it was fine. The breathing test was arranged by a neurologist after my bout of bad breathing in early November. At that time I was waking up several times a night gasping for breath and during the day couldn't speak more than three words at a time, even sitting down.

I did not get my 'pulmonary function' test until mid December, by which time my symptoms were much improved. So much so, when I arrived for the appointment I doubted they would find anything. I was therefore quite surprised when I became so out of breath trying to do the test.

The test itself first involved blowing into a hand held tube contraption as fast and hard as I could. While I say I wasn't able to do this, I mean I wasn't able to do it well. I tried my hardest and I'm sure there was some air there! It wasn't like there was nothing, it was just hard and exhausting. They gave me a few minutes between each one to recover. Then they attached the tube to a sort of square machine and asked me to do it again, and then finally with a peg on my nose (the hardest). She was writing some numbers down, in the 60s, and then in the 40s.

While I accept that it could be muscular tension, it is some seem incredibly weird, given that it has been there, fluctuating for three years, at the bottom of my left rib cage, that that is the case. I do pranyama breathing exercises every morning and during the days my breathing was bad my ability to inhale and exhale became less and less very quickly. I had the sensation of something folding on the left side. I've slept upright ever since. I'm so used to it now I don't notice it's there – it has become my 'normal'. I still can't blow my nose or cough very well though!

I will look into seeing a private pulmonologist, but that means I have to persuade those around me, who I depend upon for getting about, that this is what needs to be done.