Cold/Asthma/Bronchitis/Pneumonia

[NotQuiteCockney]

What's the difference between Bronchitis and Pneumonia? What is "walking" pneumonia? What are the symptoms of each?

(I'm pretty sure I've got bronchitis, and pretty sure I don't have pneumonia.)

Oh dear NQC, are you still unwell. Poor thing. I've next to no medical knowledge so I can't be much help, but surely bronchitis is in your bronchial tubes and pneumonia is fluid in your lungs isn't it? It would feel quite different surely as any fluid in the lungs would fall to the bottom (at least it did the couple of times that I had fluid in my lungs).

Dunno. I always get chesty and wheezy after a cold these days. I think I'm on the mend really. (Weekend sucked. Shocker.)

My puffer doesn't seem to help that much. I feel v weak when I bicycle. I don't know what's going on. It'll sort itself out, I'm sure, but other people have said about having a "spit test" and finding out they had pneumonia, and I just wonder ... how would I know? (And wtf is a "spit test"?)

I get very chesty after colds too, and for years my mum has been telling my I'm asthmatic and I should get an inhaler, but I didn't think I was as it felt more as though there was something there rather than just a restriction in my airway. Someone suggested to me that I could have a catarrh (sp?) problem so the last time I had a cough after a cold I tried a catarrh cough medicine (Covonia Catarrh and Chesty Cough I think) and it made a huge and almost instant difference. It really loosened the phlem (sp? again) so that when I coughed it move out of my airway, and then I stopped needing to cough.

I've never heard of a spit test, the time I had pneumonia was a complication of pleurisy so I was in hospital anyway and they diagnosed it by listening to my lungs and doing a scan. The other time I had fluid in my lungs was a complication of IVF and it was also spotted on an ultrasound scan (although a scan wasn't really needed as I could feel the fluid moving around when I breathed).

I hope you're feeling much better soon.

I'm not really coughing, so much as wheezing. I'm only slightly asthmatic (as in, I only use my puffer for exercise, and when I have a cold), but it does seem asthmatic to me ... it seems to be improving, anyway. Maybe?

i've heard of the - ahem - sputum test for tb

Oooooh! Get you!

Fine, then, the sputum test ...