Happy to Be Low

Man, that random asthma attack I mentioned in the previous post was a bad one. Despite 40mg of prednisone,  I fought it hard all day. I needed to be in bed doing nothing, but that's not how my life works right now. Instead I spent the day dealing with various weirdo relatives at my weirdo parent's house, which kept my lungs pretty irritated.

The curse I live with is having very strong boundaries and a low tolerance for dysfunction. Guess what my family is full of? Toxic, co-dependent people with various psych diagnoses and a penchant for misogyny, racism and homophobia.

It's really A LOT easier to be crazy. The crazy people are oblivious.

So I couldn't breathe and I was surrounded by whackadoos who allegedly had the same DNA as me, but somehow mine didn't express its full potential for crazy...leaving me and hubby (the crazy in his family skipped him too) the odd ones out.

Oh and the guests of honor were three hours late. What was supposed to be a short visit turned into a marathon day with family...increasingly irritated and grumpy family. With my lungs in the shape they were, I had no choice but to be Zen about everything.

They're an hour late? Okay.

Two hours late? Sure.

Go to the grocery store and get appetizers so we don't starve even though I can't really breathe well enough to walk and everyone else can*? Whatever. I'm down.

You're going to scream at each other about tortilla chips? Cool. I'm just going to sit here and drink my lemonade.

Go to the grocery store again for more food because they're still not here and the lunch we were going to have is now on track to be an early dinner? Well, I'll just walk even slower this time, lean on the grocery cart and hope it works out. I've done it before. No biggie.

Somehow I made it through and stayed out of the ER. The universe was definitely making me work for that.

I also stopped the med that was pushing my potassium level so high for a few days, just to be safe. When I did some poking around, I found my dose was kind of high, about double of what other docs prescribe.

I've since negotiated the dose down by half. As it turns out, it was driving my blood pressure way too low and needed to be adjusted anyway. So the breathing issues were compounded by the low blood pressure.

However, for the first time, I seem to have a blood pressure med that works really well for me and it also addresses aspects of PCOS for a one-two punch. Exciting stuff!

Sadly, I researched and initiated the whole thing. It took about a year of maneuvering to get it done because I had to dump my primary doc, find a new one (really hard to do!), and work up the energy to take on the medical world.

Once again, it's not like anyone in the medical-industrial complex was actually putting any effort into improving my health. But I seem to be surviving it okay.

*Yeah. No one in my extended family cares that I can't breathe. We've noticed. Hubby is awesome, but doesn't know how to put together an appetizer menu on the fly. I just try to be grateful that I can somehow pull off grocery shopping in the midst of such a serious attack.