If you guessed that it was me, you guessed right! Yay?
This past week has been a lung-o-riffic catastrophe. Last Sunday Joel and I did a big houseclean since the place had gotten completely out of hand, and that seems to have kicked off the wheezarama. Then, one of his co-workers shared a particularly virulant cold, which I promptly caught, too. The guy who apparently brought this cold to work has been out sick all week with an associated ear-infection and vertigo. Yeah, it preys on your weaknesses. And my lungs are my weak point.
I had an appointment with my regular doctor last Tuesday (the day it snowed) for a follow-up after the wreck to make sure everything was healing correctly (it is) and I thought that was as good of time as any to bring up the complaint that my asthma has been getting more and more out of control and that I’d like to see about fixing that. So, the doctor listened to my lungs, asked me about my triggers and frequency of problems, and prescribed me a preventative inhaler called Flovent and sent me on my way.
Then there was that day when I rode my bike all over the place and accomplished nothing. Then I decided to suck it up and buy my medicine full-price because I was sick of having problems with breathing.
On Friday, Melissa came over and we had our doggy playdate, and that whole afternoon, I was a wheezing, sneezing, coughing fool, but I chalked it up to allergies and not having had a chance to get and start using my new inhaler. Only, I kept getting worse. I had a completely lousy night Friday night, being breathless and wheezy and unable to sleep. All day Saturday I felt useless and shaky. I tried to go out on the ACME ride, but the state of my lungs and my still-achy shoulder took all of the fun out of that ride. I got home, and my breathing situation just steadily got worse and worse.
By the time Joel got home, each of my breaths sounded like a meow and I was completely miserable and starting to freak out. I dithered around all evening debating on whether I was having an asthma attack and whether it was bad enough to go to the ER. Around about 9:15, I decided that yes, I needed to go to the hospital. There was no return to normal breathing in the foreseeable future, and I was starting to get that involuntary panic response that I get when I can’t breathe, which only makes things worse.
This time we went to the KU Med Center emergency room, they checked me in, put me on an albuterol breathing treatment, and got me back to being able to breathe in a somewhat normal fashion. Then, the doctor listened to my lungs again and noticed some abnormal noise coming from the right side and ordered x-rays which revealed an infection there. So, on top of having lungs irritated from the whole asthma/allergy thing, I have some infection holed up in there making matters worse. Bronchitis! Bleh.
Now, I have antibiotics to take, plus Prednisone, plus the inhaler…I’m medicated to the hilt, but at least I am not freaking out and wheezing all over the place.