By the time I woke up this morning, the congestion had spread to my chest, and I was wheezing badly and short of breath. Otherwise, I felt ok, no fever or anything, so I went to work but called my allergist as soon as the office opened. The nurse (bless her!) said, "Hold on a minute, let me go talk to Dr. Stone" and when she came back said, "Can you be here at 10:00?" I said sure and told my principal I needed to leave for a little while to go to the doctor.
When I got there, Dr. Stone said the nurse could hear in my voice how badly I was wheezing. They did a spirometry test to measure my lung function (it's the one where you take a deep breath, and then blow out as hard and as fast as you can into a tube). Well, turns out that my lung function was only 42% of normal.
Dr. Stone said it's the worst result I've ever had on one of those tests.
In fact, he turned to the young resident doctor accompanying him today and said, "This says to me that her lung function has been deteriorating for a while. If she'd had normal function up until today and you flipped a switch and turned it down to only 42%, she wouldn't have been able to walk in here or talk without gasping for air. She's obviously been compensating for reduced function for a while so didn't notice until it got really bad." He gave me two breathing treatments and a large dose of prednisone on the spot and made me take two more spirometry readings before he was satisfied that I was okay and let me leave. He said I could easily have ended up in the hospital.
He's putting me back on some stronger asthma meds (that I had discontinued last year), two weeks of prednisone, and an antibiotic just to cover all the bases. He wants to see me back in three months and said to come immediately if I had any more exacerbations in the meantime. He also said that I probably had never really recovered completely from being sick last month. My regular doctor had seen me and just gave me three days' worth of prednisone since my only real symptom had been congestion and wheezing. (I had tested negative for Covid, strep, and flu so she thought it was a regular cold). In the future, I'll go see Dr. Stone for any issues like that, since a GP obviously isn't an asthma specialist and isn't the right doctor to see in those circumstances. I asked today if I needed a flu and/or Covid test; he said that if it's flu (unlikely) that I've had symptoms for several days and Tamiflu wouldn't work now anyway, and that I could take an at-home Covid test if I was curious, but that there wasn't much they could do about that but treat the symptoms, which we're already doing. He thinks it's more likely that my asthma is not well controlled these days and the slightest cold is pushing me to the brink. I think he's right about that.
You know, I've been feeling low-key bad for weeks (if not months) now. I wake up exhausted, I'm tired all the time, sometimes I have brain fog...no wonder! I'm not breathing well! For the longest time I've been looking at myself in the mirror in the morning thinking, "I look awful. My color is bad; I have bags and dark circles under my eyes. I guess my age is catching up to me. I guess this is just what I look like in the morning now" and just feeling awful about myself. Well, my age may be catching up to me a little, but the bags and dark circles and pale blotchy skin probably has more to do with a lack of oxygen more than my age. I hope so, anyway.
I went back by work to close out the day's deposit, then left early. I've been at home since hoping to get a nap, but I can't (probably due to the prednisone) but I'm breathing a little easier at least.
God, what a week. Thank you all for the supportive comments on my last post.
