Well, I have asthma now.
I do believe it is better for me to admit the cold hard
truth now instead of constantly telling myself “I don’t have it, I don’t have
it, I don’t have it.”
You see, no one in my family no matter how deeply we go has
been diagnosed with asthma that we know of.
My mother and grandma have low lung capacity and breathe hard when
hiking mountains, but no inhalers have ever been seen inside of my family.
Until now. And I have
two of them.
 |
| Two Puffs 3x Daily |
 |
| Two Puffs 2x Daily |
But the thing is, I kept coughing late at night before bed. And then I started coughing during the
day. And then I was coughing every other
breath when trying to hold a conversation or sing a song. And don’t even get me started on laughing.
Two weeks into it, when I was hacking up mucus and hearing
my chest rattle every time I drew a breath, we had to go to the doctor to check
up on … something or other. I’ve been to
the doctor a lot recently. Anyway, I
happened to mention that I had this cough and the conversation went a little
like this.
Doc: Do you cough when you sing or talk a lot?
Me: Yes
Doc: Does mucus come up?
Me: Yeah
Doc: Is it more of a wet cough?
Me: Yup.
Doc: You have asthma.
Um … what? That’s
it? No “well it could be this,” no two
week wait before proper diagnoses, not even a breathing test, and you determine
I have asthma? You can image why I didn’t
believe her.
Anyway, I took some kind of test and apparently, the results
came back showing that I have asthma.
Something about percentages …
So now I take two inhalers three times a day on top of two
vitamin supplements, a multivitamin, and my regular crohn’s medicine. I’ll admit, the cough got better. It didn’t go away, but it got better.
Then, the doctor recommended I go off of one of the inhalers
and only use the other one.
The cough came back right away! It was horrible and it just makes me feel
tired all the time. It takes a lot of
energy to hack up your lungs, you know.
Add that to the stuffed up nose and *ahem* cramps *ahem* and I was just
about ready to lay down and die.
And then I had to go to work …
So I am now taking both inhalers and I have accepted the
asthma into my little disease family. I
should start naming my ailments …
 |
| Edna |
 |
| Bob |
“I kind of like the asthma. It adds to my coolness.”
Hoping you’re feeling better than I am,
Little Me
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P.S. A Note About My Doctor
So, I finally start believing my doctor about the asthma, and
then she ruins it all.
When we went in for another checkup (for the new asthma,) I
had a stuffed up nose and very mild cold symptoms. I wasn’t worried, after all it happens every
single month around the exact same time … I’ll let your imagination figure out
why.
However, my doctor immediately said (and I quote)
“You have kind of a wet cough. I think it’s Secondary Bronchitis. I’m going to prescribe antibiotics –”
First of all, you said the wet cough was asthma, not bronchitis. Second of all, antibiotics? So I
immediately cut her off and responded,
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, it’s just a cold! It happens [every single month], it’ll go away on its own! It always does.”
To which she said:
“I don’t prescribe antibiotics like water …”
Anyway, I refused the antibiotics, as politely as I could in
my fear of having more medicine to
take, and guess what? The next day, the
stuffy nose immediately was better.
Hmmmm …
You should listen to your doctor, you really should. Just use your own common sense as well,
because sometimes they just take your symptoms and give you a textbook
diagnoses, and it’s not always correct.
