Thursday, February 07, 2008

Blogging will be more normal... again

I know my blogging has been a bit erratic lately. Obviously, real life has been taking a lot of energy. I'm still trying to get caught up from being gone. I'm also just physically and emotionally worn out. The last 18 months have been very difficult and I think I was just holding it together and finally crumpled - being sick for five days in Kentucky, and as of yesterday I have a new crop of drugs. But I anticipate getting back on my more normal blogging schedule.

Yesterday I spent most of the day dealing with my own good health. I woke up yesterday with these very weird feelings of being unable to breathe and just not feeling normal. I went through a whole spectrum of possibilities and by 9 a.m. knew that a doctor's appointment was in my near future. Of course, Wednesday is the day my doctor is out of the office.

But, I saw one of his colleagues who was completely uninterested in all of my other symptoms and weirdness once he listened to my lungs. He said he wasn't surprised that I felt like I couldn't breathe - that I was wheezing and needed more antibiotics, as well as some other things, to clear it all up.

Of course, I could have told the doctor last week who was filling in when my doc was gone that when they gave me 7 days of amoxicillin that that wasn't going to be sufficient. In his defense, I did call from Kentucky and he didn't get to see me in person, but I'm pretty aware of my own condition and not given to wanting antibiotics just for the thrill of spending money on them and being tied to ingesting them multiple times a day.

But, who would listen to me? I'm merely the patient. I'm just the one who knows how much I'm coughing and how "productive" it is. I'm just the one who has been dealing with my own health for 46 years. I'm just the one who knows that 7 days never clears up anything that is substantial enough for me to actually seek medical attention. I'm just the one who spent most of childhood on some sort of antibiotic, trying to kill whatever was in me, which didn't happen until I was on penicillin daily for one year. Yes, one year. After that I went from being on antibiotics every few weeks to maybe once every 2-3 years. But, yeah, what would I know? I know my own doctor listens to me - it's one of the reasons I like him so much. He should do bedside training for other doctors.

Yesterday the doctor filling in took me seriously, even though he told me nothing about my weird symptoms that caused me to go in. However, he seems to have hit the nail on the head because I feel better today than I have in weeks. I left with prescriptions for an inhaler, a round of prednisone and some heavy duty antibiotics.

Last night was the first night in a long time that I went to sleep without listening to the sound of my lungs wheezing, although I didn't know what that was. And, not surprisingly, I slept really well for many hours.

I woke up this morning realizing that a grant I had been working on earlier this month, but hadn't finished when I left for Kentucky, was due tomorrow. I've got it ready to print now and fortunately, I can drop it off in town so it will arrive before tomorrow's deadline. Thank goodness that popped into my brain. And fortunately, I felt like finishing it today.

I'm optimistic I'm on the road to recovery now.


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