I was diagnosed with BE by a local Pulmonologist in October 2022 based on a Chest CT. I had been sick off and on for 8 months at the time. I had a bronchoscopy that showed no infection. I continued to be short of breath and exhausted in spite of using an Acapella twice a day and taking Azithromycin 3 days a week.

In July 2023 I found this group. I started using 7% saline against the advice of my local pulmonologist because he thought it was too harsh. I also quit taking Azithromycin.

I contacted UT Tyler for an appointment. By the time I got in to see Dr. McShane in December 2023 I felt like a different person. She told me that my decisions to start saline and stop Azithromycin were good decisions. I had energy and coughed much less. She did a CT and there was no BE. She compared it to my first CT and said she might be able to see BE one area if she looked real hard but it wasn’t enough. I still have all of the other symptoms so I use saline and do airway clearance daily. I take Mucinex and NAC daily as well.

I still have an annual CT, PFT, bloodwork and do sputum tests if I feel ill. I now see Dr. Diego Maselli at UTSA. Dr. McShane is going to keep tabs on me in her research at the NIH because I’m an anomaly since I have all of the symptoms of BE without CT manifestations. My thought on this is that I caught this early on and thanks to this group learned the standard of care and began doing the recommended things immediately. Did I ever have BE - probably not. Was I on the path to BE - probably so, but proper intervention is keeping it from progressing.