(no subject)

[rivka]

Okay, my doctor just scared the hell out of me.

My cough has gotten abruptly worse over the last couple of days. I'm feeling like I just can't catch my breath - it's scarily reminiscent of the beginning of the serious bout with reactive airway disease I had in 2003, the one that sent me to the ER and had me doing nebulizer treatments at home.

Yesterday at dinner I made noises about "if I'm not better by Monday...", and Michael just gave me a look. By bedtime, I could no longer argue with him about whether I was going to go to work today or stay home and see the doctor. By this afternoon, I had to ask him to drive me to the doctor, because I was feeling so lightheaded.

So we went to my doctor together. My peak flow (a measure of how well I can blow out air) is 275. Normal for my age and height looks like it's close to 500. She changed my antibiotic. She prescribed an albuterol inhaler and a course of steroids to open up my airway. And (this was the part that seriously alarmed me) she told us that if my breathing worsened at all over the weekend that I shouldn't play games - I should go straight to the hospital.

Yikes.

Comments

[curmudgn]

Your doctor is bleedin' well right and giving you excellent advice, says the chronic asthmatic of more than forty years' standing (and several years' lying down, too). I'm so compromised that I have barely more than one functional lung left, and *I* can blow a PFT of 350 (normal for height and age: around 625). Get me fully medicated on Advair, Singulair, and Nasonex, and I can blow near 500. If you're so compromised you're under 300 right now, that flat scares me.