I went to the emergency room last night for the first time in 15 years. Last time I saw the inside of an E.R., I’d sliced the palm of my hand wide open while helping to heft an empty stock-tank over a barbed wire fence.
Well, last night wasn’t anything so cool or gory. No battle scars, no amusing anecdotes for later on. Last night was just the grand, glorious, and wheezy confirmation of a suspicion I’ve had for a couple of years.
*cue AOL mailbox voice*
I’ve got asthma.
Whooo, lucky me.
I’d had episodes in the past that were probably mild asthma attacks, which I simply misread as “my allergies getting out of hand,” which in a way, they were. Usually a hot bath, a Benadryl, and going to sit in the fresh air on the front porch made the wheezing/coughing/sneezing go away. Last night, however, my usual remedies weren’t helping, and it seemed like it was getting worse. When I finally decided I should wake Todd up and have him take me to the emergency room, I couldn’t walk across the room without having to lean on something on the other end, and I sounded like I was doing Lamaze breathing. Woof woof woof woof weeeeeeeeze.
So I got in pretty quickly, a nurse gave me a freaky looking kazoo to honk into to see how much wind I could generate, then gave me another even freakier instrument that vaporized a medication that would beat my rioting bronchial tubes and alvioli back into submission.
After that, I felt pretty good, but they wanted to have me hang around a bit, get a chest x-ray to be sure I didn’t have pneumonia or an alien in there and tell me that if I had asthma, and that I’d damn well better get my narrow behind to my regular doctor and get an official diagnosis, then I should be on a preventative treatment, because apparently each time you have an asthma attack, it damanges your lungs and makes them less efficient. What with me being all active and shit, damaged lungs are REAL low on my must-have wishlist.
So, now I have to make an appointment and schlep ass to the Dr. be weighed, which stresses me out, get my girly exam, since I’d have to do that in July anyway, and give my doc the rundown on my wheezitude, and probably get stuck with medication I’ll have to take until the dawn of forever.
While the thought of permanently fucked-up lungs is scary, the thought huffing a steroid mist twice a day isn’t exactly a comforting or exciting prospect, either.