I have a vivid, dramatic imagination, so I was very relieved to be told that the chest x-rays were good (e.g., no pneumonia and more importantly, no cancer). I got that news on my phone as I drove in today for the 3rd time this week to be trained on some QA for which I'll be responsible until I leave, as everyone else is leaving before me. So I told my boss I still have bronchitis and asked her if she was OK with my driving in just one day next week, rather than my usual 2, since I still feel crummy. She said yes and because she's a nurse, I told her and two of the other nurses with whom I work (we were all together) what my symptoms are and that my doctor had prescribed Cipro. She laughed and said "You told him you're not taking that, right?" I told her I'd actually been thinking I would take it, since I've had this miserable cough for 10 months. Both she and the other nurses immediately began quizzing me, in detail, about my symptoms. My boss wanted to know if I ever cough up any phlegm and if so, what it looks like. I told her it's clear with white flecks and all 3 nurses responded in unison: "So you don't have a bacterial infection, so there is absolutely no reason to take the Cipro". Their unanimous diagnosis? The same as mine (and I'm not a nurse, but I did work for 5 years as a diagnostician): allergic asthma. They recommended that rather than Cipro, I try OTC anti allergy meds, so I'm going to try Claritin and Zyrtec (one at a time), and I'll also use my albuterol inhaler to see if I get any relief from coughing with those treatments. My boss also recommended I make an appointment with a pulmonologist for a spirometry test so I can, if needed, be prescribes an Advair diskus inhaler in addition to the albuterol inhaler. So I'm feeling much better psychologically today, and all because I drove in to work. Sometimes that horrible commute is totally worth it.
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2 comments:
Might not be a bad idea to research what you could have introduced into your environment over the past year that you might be sensitive to...
Exactly, Lisa. Unfortunately, I'm worried I might have become intolerant to cat dander and hair. Both of my cats are short haired, but Chili, a marmelade, sheds a prodigious amount of cat hair. I had sisal rugs in the living room but they were a magnet for cat hair so I've gotten rid of those and I'm going to get a robot vacuum cleaner and run it every day to specifically pick up cat hair. I also may have to start brushing both of them every day instead of once a week to keep the hair and dander at a minimum. Of course I'm speculating that this is what it is: When I go to a pulmonologist, I'll be tested to try to find the cause.
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