Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

It has been a tough month.

I had a virus aka flu-like thing that wiped me out for days and landed me on a course of prednisone for my asthma. Not being able to breath sucks. Wheezing continuously sucks. Realizing your usual course of meds aren’t working sucks.

While pred is a wonder drug for asthma, it also triggers hypomania and anxiety symptoms. So I had to taper off and deal with those. Lots of terrible anxiety dreams.

Then the asthma symptoms worsened again. I ended up back in Urgent Care and put on practical bed rest. So I’m back on pred with some stronger anti-anxiety meds to buffer me.

I actually feel sick. I can’t sleep well, I’m struggling with chills/fevers, I cough, and I’m not hungry. It is frustrating to say the least bc I don’t have a virus or infection – my lungs are the enemy.

My asthma doc was out last week and his partner wasn’t super helpful. Trying to get asthma doc to talk on phone with pdoc to address the problem was impossible. They have no incentive to lose billable time to such activities. And why would we expect otherwise when their insurance overlords clearly don’t prioritize patients with dual system providers?

So I’m exhausted 80% of the time, frustrated the other 20%. Lots of herbal tea, lots of naps, etc. Working the recovery plan, using my tools.

Fair warning: unsolicited advice will probably not go over well (see irritability) If you even think the term ‘neti pot’ while reading this, I will curse your children’s children.

A good way to support someone waylaid by such situations is to listen  (try to ignore the wheeze), send over care packages with things like soup, tissue, vicks and tea, and don’t tell me about what happened to your cousin or your fourth grade teacher.

This isn’t funny. Breathing is important. Hypomania can slide into more serious concerns. Anxiety is awful. I know this. We micromanage everything right now to avoid those outcomes.

Micromanaging sucks.

–