Asthma Update

The good news is that I can finally breathe. The bad news is that I can't sleep. I'm so hopped up on steroids and Albuterol(stimulant) sleeping is impossible right now. It's 3am Tuesday morning and sleep will sure be a welcome thing when it finally comes. I've also determined that steroids make me feel basically crappy all over. I don't know what's worse, not being able to breathe, or the side effects of steroids...they both suck.

My doctor came pretty close to admitting me to the hospital, but I begged him to exhaust all in his medical power first to keep me home and he was great about that. He kept me in his office most of the day under observation, but that beats a stay in the hospital any 'ol day in my book. Despite my over all general bad feelings of the Austin health care system, and despite my griping about how much the doctors in this town suck, I have to give Kudos to Dr. Paige for working really hard on my case and letting me go home. I'm now officially going on the record to say that not ALL doctors in Austin suck. Dr. Paige gets a big gold star in my book.

Oh I forgot to mention. I've got this nifty little breathing meter that tells me if I am in a danger zone or not with the asthma and Doc Paige gave me a number to stay above. If I fall under that number I promised I would be a good little patient and immediately go to the ER. So far I've managed to hover just above the danger zone thank goodness. I'm hoping if I can get some sleep I'll see a major improvement sometime today. This is probably the worse asthma attack I've had in years and I'm still not convinced I didn't get into something bad environmentally.

Btw, I don't have pneumonia which is more good news. It turns out that is what Robert most likely had, but the team of doctors working on him are kinda conflicted on the diagnosis. One team of doctors says it's not anything they can identify and because of that, they don't want him out of the hospital until they know for sure what happened to him. The other team of doctors says that he should be released since he is not symptomatic anymore and are not bothered by the fact they couldn't diagnose him with certainty. My vote is that although this is costing Robert a fortune in medical bills, I really want them to find out what is wrong for sure. It bugs me that a person can go to a hospital, have all kinds of tests and teams of doctors, and nothing wrong can be found when clearly something is wrong. But it's good that they did rule out a ton of really bad dangerous stuff.