…the bad news is, it’ll take a few weeks to calibrate a proper schedule for albuterol.
Ladies and gents, I was diagnosed with asthma yesterday afternoon. I managed by the skin of my teeth to snag an appointment at Kaiser, and got checked out, listened to, scoped, you name it. I thought it was chronic bronchitis, because anything and everything makes me cough. From Pancho pissing me off because he left a “present” on the floor, to the hens ganging up on me for recess, to work stress, to jackasses on BART applying nail polish in a closed space (I shit you all NOT on that), to noxious synthetic perfumes, to dust, to Spare the Air days, and then back again. Everything results in overly stimulated bronchial tubes, phlegm, and a coughing fit that makes me sound like I have the consumption. It was getting a hell of a lot better, and then we had this horrible heat, and something like 3 Spare the Air days in a row, in my region.
My initial thought for this post was a slightly tongue-in-cheek but highly reactive and angry, “I’d like to thank the Academy, and all my insular relatives, for blessing me with a chronic lung disease…” rant. I may still post that at some point, just to take an emotional dump and clear the pipes as it were. I really am angry. At my grandmothers in particular, for joking that people who bitch about second-hand smoke are selfish asses, when in fact they were the selfish asses for never seeking help with their addictions. It was going to be grand. I was going to post a very special shout-out dedicated to all the hardcore stoners I was exposed to in my youth, as well, from a couple relatives to a crapload of neighbors and their friends. Anyone who tells you that pot smoke is not damaging is a fucking crackhead, ’nuff said. And I am not one of those “we must never legalize this!” zealots, either. I’d rather see it legalized and taxed frankly. But now that we have all these damn dispensaries in the SF Bay Area, I am smelling green burning skunks way more than I should, and let’s face it the smoke is very harsh and I am getting so tired of coughing when I smell it.
(The fact of the matter is I’ve had this for years, probably, and repeated illness due to disgusting commuter trains and my stressful job totally egged it on to a crisis moment where I needed to make sure I wasn’t dying or something ridiculous like that. And I cannot overstate how grateful I am that the cats don’t make me cough in general. Not being able to snuggle and hold and play with them would be pretty devastating. Same goes for the chickens.)
But that was the Angry Sara of this morning. Right now I’m the Too Bloody Exhausted to Bitch Much Sara, and I have to actually crash for a couple hours just so I can do chores tonight and not collapse.
If anything and everything makes you cough up a lung, get screened for asthma, eh. You don’t have to be a wheezer to be an asthmatic.
8 Responses to “the good news is, now I know why I cough chronically…”
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no. do not accept it. our bodies become ‘ill’ only if we give permission. i went through the same nonsense. let me talk to you. you dont have to go through the inhaler b.s like i did. i would like to speak to you. please shoot me a mail. you know the story. i will give you their contact #s.
faustian, I see your point, but the inhaler is helping already. My lungs have been doing this, going through spasms with every single foreign particle, smell, odor, bit of pollution, for a couple of decades, now that I think back to the really serious illnesses I’ve been through, and the seriously long time it took to quit coughing each and every time. I am all for mind over matter, but if I’m in the throes of a coughing fit that leaves me gasping for air and gagging, it is a little hard to tell the ailment to fuck off. I know that’s not what you’re telling me to do, but telling my body to knock this off isn’t really efficacious right now. It needs to remember what it is to feel healthy, before I go that direction.
jonquil, I am coming to the conclusion, swiftly, that these lung ailments are part and parcel of living in industrialized regions, and that all we can do is find therapy which alleviates so we don’t lose productivity, when we’re not actively avoiding the sources of irritation.
And for what it is worth, the doctor told me I need to get out of Dodge and not commute like I do, anymore, because it worsens the respiratory irritation and my bronchial responses to that. Asthma isn’t just this simple disease of the bronchii going through spasms and people nearly suffocating; it’s morphed into this big constellation of various lung ailments which are brought on by environmental toxins of all sorts, lack of exercise (seriously, ya gotta have strong lungs and healthy lung capacity, which I’d wager most sedentary people do not), and avoidance of fresh air outside (what’s that stat about most homes having greater pollution inside than exists outside?), et al.
I said, “This kind of sounds like body burden”, and the doc blinked a moment, and then I saw the light click on over her head. “That is one way to view it, yes.” I mean, I knew I was highly sensitized to coumarins (these appear in scads of natural aromatics and flavorings, and to aromatics like oakmoss and massoia, and that it was just the luck of the draw on those. But it doesn’t stop me working with hay-like aromatics and oakmoss. I just don’t test these on myself so much when I’m blending perfume, for example. Don’t get me started on the synthetic aromatic compounds, and all the fake “these really are natural” isolates that the natural perfumers have been hornswoggled into buying and using, but that’s a post for a later date…
glad that the inhaler is working. i have let my exercise routine slide this summer & now it’s time to get back into it!
Ten years ago I got diagnosed with asthma and my doctor prescribed me albuterol in an inhaler, but I only tried it once or twice. I didn’t like it. At the time I just had wheezing, which I could live with, as far as I was concerned. I moved up north, and that was a big help. I think south Florida has a lot of mold, which bothers me, and so does the constant high humidity. At any rate, since being up here I have had some actual asthma attacks from particular foods, like heavily sulfited red wines and dried fruits (the non-sulfited ones are no problem). I got an idea how an asthma attack could be a medical emergency if a person’s asthma was bad enough. Just to put on the back burner and consider: for many decades here in the US and to this day in other places, datura cigarettes were the treatment of choice for asthma sufferers. One or two puffs is enough to open bronchial tubes and doesn’t have any psychoactive effect, apparently. It’s still used in India, I know that. You could still buy them otc until the late fifties in the US.
Oh yes, those asthmador cigarettes! I am not surprised they’ve been gone from the market for so long. For one thing, they worked, from all the descriptions I’ve read.
Heat and humidity is definitely a bitch with the coughing, I find. When the train hits a couple stations in particular over the hill, I cough. It’s about the transition to warm air. But if I am home all day and it is hot out, less of an issue. Friday night was hellaceous though. Humid like the tropics at 10pm, and hot and gross. I stayed out on the front porch with the cats while they got some recess time and ate bugs, and holy cow the pavement was warm.
how is your digestive system? acid reflux issues? you might want to look into that. also your vitD levels. its a simple blood test. take care.
Digestion is perfectly normal
I get tons of D from the sun. When I had blood work done last year they looked at my serum levels for vitamins, and everything looked normal.