So after my recent visit to the ER last month I found myself a pulmonologist out here to get some sound lung-advice from. I met with Dr. Ray yesterday and found out the following:
- I probably don’t have asthma…..maybe mildly at best
- I need to stop taking steroids
- There’s no reason I should have a nebulizer
- I should be able to control my “undefined lung issues” with maxair and singulair
This was all backed up with, “Your lungs sound clear today.”
…
Guess what doctor just lost a new patient. I’ll give you 3 tries.
I’ve been kinda out of it for a while. My lungs quit working for a few days again. I really need to get a new pair. I’ve been doing a lot of work on the movie blog; writing reviews and retroactively categorizing is a lot of work. I think I just finished up through June of 2005 last night.
If you have Netflix you might want to check out their on-demand viewing. I looked at it when it first came out and there were maybe 20-30 titles for each genre and absolutely nothing I wanted to watch or hadn’t seen already. I’ve been watching a few over the past couple days though and the selection has been greatly increased. There are even 2007 films you can watch. You can even watch as much as you please. When it first started you were allowed X amount of films or maybe there was a time limit. I don’t really remember.
Well, not really, but it sounds kinda fun to blame him for something like that. For all of you that have asthma out there I’m pretty sure you know what albuterol is. It’s a drug that’s used in many fast-action inhalers. Many of the inhalers people use contain CFCs to propel the medicine into their lungs. Since CFCs are being banned in other places, why not inhalers? This doesn’t seem like a big deal, right?
The alternative seems to be marginal at best; at least from what I’m reading. They clog up easily, taste funny, don’t produce the same results and can cost up to four times as much.
The deadline for pulling all CFC inhalers off the shelves is supposed to be December of 2008. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
Liz and I finally made it to Iowa tonight. Had a lot of rain and then some snow to drive through. Luckily we made it safely. There were a lot of dumb people out on the road today - including black vehicles without their lights on.
Right now it’s about 1:15am Iowa time which would make it 2:15am Indiana time. Everybody else is asleep except for me. Haven’t been sleeping much lately. I was doing great until 2 weeks ago Tuesday when the asthma got the best of me again due to the incessant leaf burning that’s been happening in my town. I’m on lots of medicine which makes my lungs work marginally well, but I don’t sleep or eat much. So once again I’m on my super-asthma-weight-loss-program and I’ve been able to catch many sub-par movies on TV in the 11pm-4am range. I’m hoping my lungs just get better soon and that I don’t get pneumonia or anything. That wouldn’t be much fun at all.
The plan is to hang out with Josh and Erin on Saturday. Other than that, lots of relaxing, playing guitar hero and eating some wonderful mexican food. Happy Thanksgiving!
Well, it’s another Sunday afternoon. Liz and I are watching Ocean’s 11 followed by Ocean’s 12. We’re taking a break at the moment and I figured I needed to post something. Had another asthma setback Wednesday night. Somebody was burning some stuff and it affected me adversely. Even though I get back to feeling “normal”, I still haven’t gotten back to where my lungs are 100% since I had pneumonia last fall. Luckily I was able to get into my doctor Thursday. He’s pretty cool. He also listens and takes me seriously. Since I’m not a big complainer, it’s nice having a doctor that I can tell what the situation is and he just takes my word for it. I got put on some extra medicine temporarily and I was ordered to take a couple days off work. I should be back Monday.
I also saw the new Harry Potter movie. That’s what Liz and I were coming back from on Wednesday. I liked the movie. It was pretty entertaining. When I saw the first one, I didn’t really know what to think of it, but I also didn’t realize that the books got increasingly difficult in reading level as they went. I’m looking forward to the next movie.
Lofton, Liz and I recorded episode 7 of the Lebowski Podcast last weekend and I posted it very late Monday night. In less than a week we’ve had over 300 downloads. I just setup statistics July 9th, so before then we haven’t really had much of an idea how many people subscribe or listen. This latest episode is a little less polished because we used an mp3 recorder in Lofton’s downtown loft. There was some background noise and the sound kinda cuts out every once in a while. It was nice to do something “on location” though.
My Lebowski Time Magazine “Man of the Year” mirror arrived this past week. It’s pretty rockin. I need to figure out where I’m going to hang it on the wall. I’ll have to get some pictures of it and post em.
I feel like lots has been happening. Every time I think, “I should blog about that” I’m always too busy to actually sit down and do it. Last week our water got turned off. That was kinda interesting. Luckily I was already done with my shower and out the door when it happened. Well, I guess that’s lucky for me. I called up the city and turns out they had turned off the wrong water. Our neighbor had moved out the night before and the city had just made a mistake. At first I was a bit worried about forgetting to pay the bill or something like that. Everything turned out though.
I’m sure all of you are looking forward to all of the new summer movies coming out. Liz and I still haven’t seen Spiderman 3 or the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We don’t really care that much. We’re saving our money for the good ones….like Hot Fuzz, 28 Weeks Later and more recently……Knocked Up. That latest, another Judd Apatow classic, is simply amazing. The best thing I’ve seen since Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. I just love the stuff he makes because they characters seem so real. I sympathize with them, I have a friend just like them, or something happens that happened to me once. I also loved that half the cast from his TV shows appeared in this movie. If you saw 40 Year Old Virgin, you would have recognized a ton of actors there too. I’m hoping Liz and I go see it again.
Lastly, I went to my asthma doctor yesterday. It’s been three months since I felt like I was dying. Amazingly, my lungs are great. However, I just so happened to have gained 20+ pounds since all this crap started a little over a year ago. Starting last month, I’ve been trying to get active again. I’ve been walking to work (about 4 miles round trip), I’ve gotten back into lifting again and I’ve tried to start eating less. I don’t think Liz likes my amazing weight loss capabilities. Last year I realized some of my clothes didn’t fit any more so I lost 10 pounds in a week and a half so I could wear my nice pants to a wedding. For some reason when I start eating only when I’m hungry and start exercising, the pounds just drop. For example, I lost 5 pounds between yesterday morning and this morning. That’s a bit extreme, but as long as I keep it off and stick to what I’m doing, I’ll hoping be back to “normal” by the end of summer.
Recently I put up a link about walking at work. I’ve decided to put my money where my mouth is. I’ve been walking to work. I live about 2 miles away so I’m putting in 4 miles of walking a day. It takes about 30 min to get there and home, but the weather is wonderful and it’s just so nice. It’s also saving me a ton of gas money. I was thinking how it’s weird that I’m walking 2 miles to work, but when I lived 6-7 blocks away, I never wanted to walk. It’s been really weird this past year getting so out of shape. It seems like I was just sick and/or couldn’t breathe for so long. On top of that I was just tired all the time. I was tired when I woke up, tired at work, tired when I got home. Some days I was sleeping 12 hrs or more. Even when I started sleeping “normal” hours I would still come home and just sit around cause I was too worn out to do anything else.
Right now I feel like I have the energy to go running and stuff, but I don’t think the lungs would quite be up for it yet. The walking works out pretty well. It’s very low impact on my joints, I’m doing a significant amount of walking, and I’m not spending extra time to do it. Hopefully it doesn’t start raining. That would kinda put a damper on the whole walking.
Hey, I got out of the house today! However, it was to the hospital again - where my doctor’s office is located - so I don’t think that really counts as ‘getting out’. I’m definitely getting better, little by little. What’s really frustrating to me in this whole situation is that after finding out my medicine had been screwed up last year and spending 6 agonizing months getting worse and worse, I finally got better. I was finally starting to feel like I was getting back to normal and enjoying life when this latest ordeal happened.
Some people have told me I just need to move to another state like Arizona. As much as I like that place (I was born there), I think I’m doing fine here in Indiana as long as things are “normal”. For now I think it’s worth sticking out. I at least have a competent doctor who’s pretty awesome to boot.
Liz went in with my to see the doctor today and he was asking about the apartment situation. We were telling him a bit about the discussion going back and forth and how we had pretty much been told I’m a special case with pre-existing conditions which is why….and that’s when Dr. D cut Liz off. “Pre-existing conditions? BULLSHIT!! If he’s not going to make the place livable for you to live then he needs to advertise - Equal Opportunity Housing Unless You Have Asthma.” And that pretty much sums up my pulmonologist. He tells it like it is and I definitely appreciate that.
Liz and I submitted an apartment application and it’s being processed today. We’re hoping this works out cause we really need to get our stuff out of Briarwood. We’ll also have to get everything cleaned before I can even be around stuff.
The breathing keeps getting better. I’ve just been sleeping a lot and taking it easy. Hoping to get back to work soon.
….are not fun. I think I’ve said that many times before. Several times during the past couple weeks Liz has hinted that I need to go to the hospital. Today she got ahold of my doctor and he said I needed to go. So I went. At least this time they didn’t stick me with needles many times over. I had a good person this time. I also got stuck in the wrist again just like last time. That’s to do blood gas tests. They have to get blood out of an artery instead of a vein. It hurts. A lot.
So after being there six and a half hours and getting pumped full of new and fun drugs, I’m out. I can breathe a lot better but I still feel like crap. We never even say a doctor, just a bunch of nurses. All I could think of is, “Yeah I’m feeling better now, but I currently don’t feel any better than I have the past couple weeks. So how long til I get bad again?” Liz asked what we were supposed to do if I didn’t get better and they just said we should come back.
As I got up to leave I walked about 10-15 feet and started having another one of my signature coughing bouts. The nurse that had just checked me out started staring at me from across the room with a concerned look on her face while another one got me a wheel chair*. Then they pushed me out and got me in Liz’s car.
Right now I’m watching a Stargate SG-1 marathon and wondering if I’ll be able to sleep. Being sick really sucks. I have to remember I don’t have it so bad though. We at least have a place to live and I have decent health insurance. I also have a competent doctor this time that believes me and I totally trust. I also have a Liz that makes me grilled cheese with hotdogs inside, cooks frozen pizza and then spreads cottage cheese on top, gets me drugs and drives me to the hospital and back. What more could I really ask for**?
Well, here’s to another weekend of chilling on a couch and watching TV. I hope yours is just as fun if not more.
* Wheel chair rides are lots of fun.
** I already asked her to donate a lung, but she doesn’t want to.
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