Hello all. This January my brother was hospitalized with pneumonia and sepsis and passed away a week later. It took all of us, including him by surprise and we are still processing it. One thing that I’m wondering now is what if he had a pulmonary problem that went undiagnosed, such as CF. I’m wondering if any of you could give me any input about if any of his experiences seem similar to yours. Unfortunately for many years we did not have health insurance and got used to not going to the doctor. So he didn’t get regular check ups. He didn’t smoke but had unhealthy eating habits. He was always prone to getting cold/flu more often than the rest of us. He was pretty short all his life, 5’3” (but our family is pretty short anyways). He was normal weight from birth to college. Then gained a lot of weight. He spent his free time being very sedentary and falling sleep a lot. He’d fall asleep during his train commute to work and whenever he wasn’t doing something mentally engaging. We thought he was tired/lazy but maybe he lacked oxygen all his life and we didn’t know it. He used to say he couldn’t breathe well. In the last year he snored extremely loudly. I don’t if he was salty, but our dog used to go crazy licking his fingers and toes.
He also had IG problems which we thought were due to him gaining all the weight. He would throw up after coming home from eating out late. And he would say “it’s because I have a lot of phlegm”. This happened pretty often. He would have a really forceful/loud cough and lots of phlegm.
He would poop only once a day and he would take forever in there and fall asleep there sometimes. I never heard him wheezing and the trouble breathing wasn’t enough to prompt him to seek medical help. He never said “I can’t breathe” as in feeling out of breath, it was more like he felt constantly that his nose was blocked. We feel guilty that all along we thought he was lazy/sleepy when in reality he was probably suffering from lung problems all his life.

When he got insurance about 2 years ago they never did xrays. Just gave him prescriptions for acid reflux. He saw a doctor for a flu about 3 weeks before he was hospitalized and they gave him antibiotics. He got better and then got sick again a couple of weeks later.