![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baratronHave spent a few days being The Most Asthmatic Person In The World (TM) & having allergic reactions left, right and centre. The best bit was when I took two sips of my new Strawberry & Mango herbal tea and found my lips swelling up. Quite badly. Now, both strawberries and mangoes are fairly well known as allergenic fruits, but I've happily consumed both for years - including in other flavours of herbal tea by the same company. It's clearly not the herbs at fault, because they're the same as in several of my other flavours that don't make my lips swell up, so I'm pretty confused.
This has not been the only bad reaction in the past couple of weeks, and on Monday I spent half an hour sitting on my bedroom floor wondering if I was bad enough to need to go to A&E, but with a complete lack of desire to spend several hours sitting in A&E by myself, and without enough breath to actually ring someone to ask them to go with me. Plus, it was 10.30pm and most people I know are already heading to bed at that time :/ Suffice to say I did not die, just felt rotten for a long time, and finally got to sleep at gone 5am propped up on vast numbers of pillows. Joy.
The basic problem is that for years I've been on a very low dose of asthma steroid inhaler, because my allergies have been dealt with by a nose spray. Now that nasal steroids are contraindicated courtesy of the nose bleeds, my allergies are basically not being treated. Which means my asthma is like a million times worse. I don't get on with antihistamines - they either make me hideously ill, or have no effect at all. I've tried taking more of my asthma inhaler, but it does bugger all for chronic rhinitis (funny, that). Also although I am supposed to take 400mg of Pulmicort a day, I can't take that all at once because it's too much. As it is, I can't do anything strenuous for maybe 40 minutes after I take it (I'm not joking - if I take Pulmicort and go outside and walk up the hill, I'll start wheezing. If I have to run for a train, I'll be bright red, drenched in sweat, wheezing and completely unable to get my breath until Wimbledon (12 minutes), compared to being mildly out of breath until New Malden (3 minutes)) - this includes sleeping. So splitting the dose by taking half in the morning and half at night just isn't practical, because I can't sleep after I take it unless I take my reliever inhaler (which is kinda missing the point, right?). I suppose I could take it in the evening, but a) I have enough trouble remembering to take my evening drugs without adding another one to the mix, b) I get home at completely unpredictable times depending on my work schedule, c) taking the Pulmicort while I'm working seems like a v bad idea.
I need to go to the doctor and ask them to sort me out, but I don't really know what I'm asking for. Basically, I want something to stop me being so damn wheezy, and preferably something to sort out my allergies. Possibly I want a different steroid inhaler as well. I've heard good things about Serevent (sp?), but I don't know if it's available here or what its generic name is or anything.
So that's the advice part: Recommend me a good asthma drug and allergy medicine. Preferably one that doesn't contain lactose, because my gut gets turned out enough by the amount of lactose in the tablets I'm on already.
And I have a timetable on this, in that freezepop are playing in London on December 16th and I want to be able to go without dying. At the moment, just being in a room with one person who is smoking is enough to cause me severe respiratory distress.
And this is all so weird for me, because for years either my physical or mental health problems have been the most disabling. Chronic pain or being nuts I kinda have coping skills for (in as much as anyone has coping skills for depression). Asthma has just been this thing in the background - just this thing that 1/3 of kids have, most of them pretty mildly. All of a sudden I can't do things I used to be able to, like go out and have fun, and it's bugging the hell out of me. I haven't been to the pub in almost a year, because I can't even tolerate the atmosphere in a non-smoking section; if I go to a swimming pool I'll be ill for the next day; we regularly have to insist on moving table in restaurants because the non-smoking table they've assigned us is too close to the smoking; and going to see bands or going out to clubs is virtually impossible. I'm so sensitive to solvents that the ink of a newspaper can start an allergic reaction and I have to be careful what writing paper and pens I buy. Walking down the road the other day I could actually identify ozone and sulphur dioxide in the air as the pollutants that were causing me distress - god, I wish I'd never done atmospheric chemistry.
In a way the worst thing of all is being a chemist who will never be able to do chemistry again. I'm too allergic to too many of the common chemicals used in even school labs - I discovered that last year. I actually doubt that even getting my asthma more controlled will help with this, because the best I'll be doing is masking the symptoms, not stopping the response. Desensitisation therapy would help - if I wasn't so allergic to so many unspecified things that they wouldn't dare do something like that to me.
This has not been the only bad reaction in the past couple of weeks, and on Monday I spent half an hour sitting on my bedroom floor wondering if I was bad enough to need to go to A&E, but with a complete lack of desire to spend several hours sitting in A&E by myself, and without enough breath to actually ring someone to ask them to go with me. Plus, it was 10.30pm and most people I know are already heading to bed at that time :/ Suffice to say I did not die, just felt rotten for a long time, and finally got to sleep at gone 5am propped up on vast numbers of pillows. Joy.
The basic problem is that for years I've been on a very low dose of asthma steroid inhaler, because my allergies have been dealt with by a nose spray. Now that nasal steroids are contraindicated courtesy of the nose bleeds, my allergies are basically not being treated. Which means my asthma is like a million times worse. I don't get on with antihistamines - they either make me hideously ill, or have no effect at all. I've tried taking more of my asthma inhaler, but it does bugger all for chronic rhinitis (funny, that). Also although I am supposed to take 400mg of Pulmicort a day, I can't take that all at once because it's too much. As it is, I can't do anything strenuous for maybe 40 minutes after I take it (I'm not joking - if I take Pulmicort and go outside and walk up the hill, I'll start wheezing. If I have to run for a train, I'll be bright red, drenched in sweat, wheezing and completely unable to get my breath until Wimbledon (12 minutes), compared to being mildly out of breath until New Malden (3 minutes)) - this includes sleeping. So splitting the dose by taking half in the morning and half at night just isn't practical, because I can't sleep after I take it unless I take my reliever inhaler (which is kinda missing the point, right?). I suppose I could take it in the evening, but a) I have enough trouble remembering to take my evening drugs without adding another one to the mix, b) I get home at completely unpredictable times depending on my work schedule, c) taking the Pulmicort while I'm working seems like a v bad idea.
I need to go to the doctor and ask them to sort me out, but I don't really know what I'm asking for. Basically, I want something to stop me being so damn wheezy, and preferably something to sort out my allergies. Possibly I want a different steroid inhaler as well. I've heard good things about Serevent (sp?), but I don't know if it's available here or what its generic name is or anything.
So that's the advice part: Recommend me a good asthma drug and allergy medicine. Preferably one that doesn't contain lactose, because my gut gets turned out enough by the amount of lactose in the tablets I'm on already.
And I have a timetable on this, in that freezepop are playing in London on December 16th and I want to be able to go without dying. At the moment, just being in a room with one person who is smoking is enough to cause me severe respiratory distress.
And this is all so weird for me, because for years either my physical or mental health problems have been the most disabling. Chronic pain or being nuts I kinda have coping skills for (in as much as anyone has coping skills for depression). Asthma has just been this thing in the background - just this thing that 1/3 of kids have, most of them pretty mildly. All of a sudden I can't do things I used to be able to, like go out and have fun, and it's bugging the hell out of me. I haven't been to the pub in almost a year, because I can't even tolerate the atmosphere in a non-smoking section; if I go to a swimming pool I'll be ill for the next day; we regularly have to insist on moving table in restaurants because the non-smoking table they've assigned us is too close to the smoking; and going to see bands or going out to clubs is virtually impossible. I'm so sensitive to solvents that the ink of a newspaper can start an allergic reaction and I have to be careful what writing paper and pens I buy. Walking down the road the other day I could actually identify ozone and sulphur dioxide in the air as the pollutants that were causing me distress - god, I wish I'd never done atmospheric chemistry.
In a way the worst thing of all is being a chemist who will never be able to do chemistry again. I'm too allergic to too many of the common chemicals used in even school labs - I discovered that last year. I actually doubt that even getting my asthma more controlled will help with this, because the best I'll be doing is masking the symptoms, not stopping the response. Desensitisation therapy would help - if I wasn't so allergic to so many unspecified things that they wouldn't dare do something like that to me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 05:43 am (UTC)I have pretty bad asthma, and yeah, it's like that, and no, I can't often even walk far, and no, I can't have desensitisation. (I did when I was a child against pollen, and it worked.)
There are new drugs coming out soon, I just learned.
There is Singulair, which works very well for some.
Scrapes both loudly and deeply though, doesn't it.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 08:08 am (UTC)I'm not an expert obviously, but I think you should consider long term oral steroid therapy. Something like betamethasone or methylprednisolone. It's not without risks and you will have to spend some time getting the dose right by trial and error, and you won't be able to come off them suddenly, and you'll have to carry a steroid card... but, considering how your allergies are impacting on your life I think it's probably worth it. Oral steroids should control your allergies and your asthma quite well.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 10:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 12:25 pm (UTC)If you haven't been, insist that you are referred to an allergy clinic who deal with allergy AND asthma - I found the advice massively helpful as they looked at our lifestyle; the allergy tests identified some severe allergies we didn't know for sure that she had and even the method she had been taking her nasal spray was wrong and exacerbating the problem.
They placed her on Serevent, the usual ventolin and becotide as well as aflixonase nasal spray which she managed to use for about 10 weeks twice a day without nose bleeds (this is compared to 4 weeks max before). Okay so we also changed out lifestyle (we moved into our own place) so the dust levels were lower, we got an aircon which allowed us to keep windows closed from pollen - which is the worst allergen followed closeky by dust and dogs.
The GP was reluctant to refer kim to allergy clinic saying they wouldn't be able to do much, but agreed to do so when told that kim had had serious life threatening asthma attacks until placed on prednisolone (steroids) 2 years running. The steroids caused further health problems for kim which made us desperately want to keep her off them for as long as possible. However they DID work. She went from being unable to lie flat, breathe or sleep to being able to sleep for short periods of time within 4 hours. Within 3 days almost all allergy symptoms cleared up and further triggering only caused short term effect - i.e removal of allergen meant she could breathe within an hour and within 24 was back to normal again (compared to snotting and wheezing for days).
I hope the GP is helpful.
Natalya
no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-26 05:52 pm (UTC)I used to have middling asthma, but it just... went away. I didn't do anything in particular over the period of time that it went away. I think it's reared a little recently, but only if I exercise a lot in the very cold.
I've always found that nosebleeds, asthma, allergies and other respiratory ailments get worse for me if it's very dry. Well, maybe not allergies. They might go the opposite direction. I don't know. But breathing in general gets easier with a humidifier, and if things are very clean and well-vaccumed.
Those breathe-right strips for the nose that aren't supposed to do anything at all help me breathe a lot. They don't solve anything, but might provide just that little bit of assistance that might make it easier to sleep sometimes. If holding your nostrils open a bit helps, then they might help. My biggest problem is my nostrils getting congested overnight, so we have very different issues there.
The only thing I've run into to help allergies (other than obviously cleaning, vacuuming, getting fresh air through, having the ducts cleaned out, etc.) is cutting out dairy, which is obviously not the issue in your case.
Sorry for the null set of useful advice that this comment is.
bleh, you poor dear.
Date: 2004-11-27 12:00 am (UTC)I do have a working strategy for not having to move tables in restaurants. People in restaurants do not want you to die on the premises, so if you say "VERY non" when they ask if you want smoking, they often believe you. Another phrase of use to me is "is there an 'allergic' section?", which should be easily altered to "asthmatic section". Band-aid for your sucking chest wound, I know. Hope it's some tiny help.