[Asthma] Collecting All The Prescriptions
Nov. 15th, 2012 03:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sessifetI get a nasty cold once every 18 months or so. Every 10 years or so, I appear to skip one or two, and instead will just fall over with a bad case of the flu (December 2010, I'm looking at you...). Normally my nasty colds go like this:
I feel slightly grotty for a day or so, then breathing vaguely makes me want to throw up, followed by about two days of my throat feeling like it's made of sandpaper no matter how much water I drink, and then the whole sorry mess descends to my chest in a few hours and I start sounding like some sort of exotic barking frog when I cough. Following a minimum of 36 hours of that, it also migrates up to my nose and I start frantically looking around for corks to stop the leaking and pipe cleaners to stick down my Eustachian tubes because graaaah itchy! The itching really only relieved shortly by sneezing, but sneezing is followed by having to blow my nose lots and after a few of these cycles, my nose starts resembling hamburger meat. Any and all of these symptoms cause me to yearn for the sweet release of death. I do not do being ill like this. Fuck equanimity, I want my respiratory system back.
My cold is progressing along its normal path, with one added difference. Well, two. No, three: really upsetting circular fever dreams, waking up sitting bolt upright because I can't breathe properly and using either preventer or emergency inhaler with a spacer makes me cough so hard I throw up. You can imagine that's been making my mornings extra special exciting. So I called triage to just double-check a few things, as this is the first time I've had a cold like this since I was diagnosed with asthma and I was worried about the fever and the inhaler bit. Unsurprisingly, they wanted to see me.
So I cycled there, had my glands poked and prodded, spent a disturbing amount of time talking about phlegm, had my lungs checked (clear as a bell), oxygen levels checked (99% which was "brilliant" considering ill, asthmatic and cycling, so whoo!) and then walked out with a new prescription for QVar (apparently a steroid aimed at adults), a 'just in case' prescription should this turn into a chest infection and an appointment for a flu jab (because I am now in one of the risk groups). So all in all, that's good. I can now file this away and the brainweasels can stop this whole "we're dying!" routine, as it's getting rather old.
I feel slightly grotty for a day or so, then breathing vaguely makes me want to throw up, followed by about two days of my throat feeling like it's made of sandpaper no matter how much water I drink, and then the whole sorry mess descends to my chest in a few hours and I start sounding like some sort of exotic barking frog when I cough. Following a minimum of 36 hours of that, it also migrates up to my nose and I start frantically looking around for corks to stop the leaking and pipe cleaners to stick down my Eustachian tubes because graaaah itchy! The itching really only relieved shortly by sneezing, but sneezing is followed by having to blow my nose lots and after a few of these cycles, my nose starts resembling hamburger meat. Any and all of these symptoms cause me to yearn for the sweet release of death. I do not do being ill like this. Fuck equanimity, I want my respiratory system back.
My cold is progressing along its normal path, with one added difference. Well, two. No, three: really upsetting circular fever dreams, waking up sitting bolt upright because I can't breathe properly and using either preventer or emergency inhaler with a spacer makes me cough so hard I throw up. You can imagine that's been making my mornings extra special exciting. So I called triage to just double-check a few things, as this is the first time I've had a cold like this since I was diagnosed with asthma and I was worried about the fever and the inhaler bit. Unsurprisingly, they wanted to see me.
So I cycled there, had my glands poked and prodded, spent a disturbing amount of time talking about phlegm, had my lungs checked (clear as a bell), oxygen levels checked (99% which was "brilliant" considering ill, asthmatic and cycling, so whoo!) and then walked out with a new prescription for QVar (apparently a steroid aimed at adults), a 'just in case' prescription should this turn into a chest infection and an appointment for a flu jab (because I am now in one of the risk groups). So all in all, that's good. I can now file this away and the brainweasels can stop this whole "we're dying!" routine, as it's getting rather old.
