Thursday, June 4, 2009

Bronchial spasms

It's been quite some time since my asthma has affected my life. Often I forget I have it. I know that sounds strange, but I typically have no symptoms unless I'm sick. Last week I started coughing and had a bit of congestion. I gave the workshop with a nice husky voice, and made it through by drinking lots of tea and sucking on cough drops. The cough was still more or less under control. By Friday I was coughing regularly and having a hard time stopping a coughing fit, basically starting to lose control of my breathing. So I put the plan my doctor and I had created when I can't control my coughing into action and started a supportive inhaler (prescription standing by).I coughed all weekend. And Monday. On Tuesday it was so bad I had coworkers coming up to me and offering me cough drops. These coworkers sit several cubes away, but my coughing was so constant it was worrying them (and probably disturbing their work). Awesome. I even had cough drops. They just weren't helping. Not. At. All. Neither was the supportive inhaler, obviously. What's worse, the coughing was waking me up at night so I couldn't even sleep. I had to use my emergency inhaler a couple of times because the coughing spasm wouldn't stop. I hate my albuterol inhaler...it makes me shake. I basically vibrate for a good hour after using it. At 3am that kind of prevents me from getting back to sleep. Not to mention taking legible notes when you're vibrating is really really hard. And I was coughing so hard it hurt.So off to the doctor I went on Wednesday afternoon. She confirmed that I was having an asthma-related bronchial spasm. Basically there's no bronchial infection, but my body doesn't realize that so it keeps trying to cough, which irritates my lungs, which perpetuates the whole cycle. The joys of cough-variant asthma. I'm now armed with a medley of medications to stop the coughing, including a stronger supportive inhaler and a short course of steroids.Let's hope it works so I can get some good sleep. Not to mention I'm tired of tea and cough drops.

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