On Steroids...

... and breathing better. Okay, a steroid: prednisone. I woke up with a fever this morning, so I elected not to go to taiji and pass it on to everyone else. Instead, I went to Portneuf's Urgent Care Center, as this felt like a repeat of the last cold I'd had less than two weeks ago, which possibly started with some ear pain in August. So I got some antibiotics for that, but I also complained about how much trouble I'd been having with my asthma lately.

First thing the doctor tried was a sort of steam/oxygen/albuterol semi-darth-vader breathing apparatus. It gives a higher dose of the albuterol, but in a more dispersive fashion, presumably to help it be absorbed better. It made me jittery, restless, and cold, but didn't fix the tight spot in my chest which was what was interfering with the breathing. So he decided to give me prednisone, which is really scary stuff if you stay on it for long. One of my mom's friends at choir had an idiot doctor who let him take the stuff constantly for nigh twenty years ... at which point his kidneys gave out. He was lucky, though: they found a matching donor in under a year. I'm supposed to be on the stuff for a total of 8 days, and the last four are step-down doses so that my body doesn't go litig when it stops getting the prednisone.

Today I can't be sure that the difference isn't due to the steam/oxygen/albuterol treatment, but my breathing is better and the tightness in my chest does seem to be a bit better. We'll see if this continues through the treatment. Incidentally, one of the common side effects of prednisone is increased appetite. If anything, I had less of an appetite today...except for fresh vegetables. Any vegetable that I thought of sounded good, especially cauliflower. I didn't have many fresh veggies on hand, though.