Yes, it was a "sniff test".

My loss of left diaphrahm function is still as random as stated above. With everything else I have it is a relatively minor annoyance. But it will be keeping me from getting right side surgery until it stabilizes.

I'm 6 months post-op and generally healing very slowly. But there is progress every month and the healing appears to be speeding up now. I cannot objectively say if it is better, I do appear to be able to handle talking for longer periods of time than I could 3 months ago.

Just a quickie --- I wondered how everyone with phrenic nerve issues are doing. I am still short of breath, on the old oxygen still.:grouphug:

I'm still having random episodes daily. Thankfully not to the point of needing oxygen. I'm wondering how much of it is just being out of shape from not even being able to walk more than 100yds at the most for the past 7 months without triggering C5 irritation in my left shoulder.

I've been doing my diaphragmatic breathing exercises and trying to correct my long-learned shallow breathing habit.

I live on a hillside so we've got lots of stairs in and around the house. Having a newborn to carry around and a 23mo to pick up doesn't seem to increase episodes too much. Sometimes the shortness of breath attacks are latent to activity by 5-10 minutes or more.

It doesn't help that its been smoky from the wildfires here and the air has been unhealthy for probably 20 of the last 24 days. So we've all been cooped up in the house with the central air circulating fan 24/7 and the portable HEPA air cleaner running on high. We've always had electrostatic filters in the HVAC as well as UV-C germicidal lights I installed near the A/C coil a few years ago.

BTW, the combination of electrostatic air filters(to replace the disposable ones), the UVC lights, running the fan as much as you can afford, and a Central Vacuum system(because it exhausts outside) is the perfect prescription to minimize having to dust your house more than 3-4 times a year. I'm not kidding. We may be down to 2-3x if I ever get around to justifying buying the barrier mattress/box spring covers.

The filters were about $50-60 each. (we needed 2 as we have 2 returns)
The UVC system was about $140 for a system that could handle a 3-5 ton system. It genetically alters the makeup of molds, viruses, etc so they can't reproduce. They recommend replacing the bulbs every year and that runs $50-60.

I installed the Central Vac myself with a mix/match system bought online from a few different sources for ~$600-700. We could have gotten by for about half of that but we got a top notch system. I spent about another $30 getting pipe lengths from a local supplier.

All the mattress/pillow stuff is going to run about $300-400 and I just can't justify that right now. My sinus/allergy issues haven't been too bad, but it looks like both kids will have chronic issues so would really like to head that off as much as possible.

We haven't been vacuuming as much as we should and the resultant dust mite buildup is quite noticable.