6 months of living in a House episode
Dec. 16th, 2022 06:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katestineIt all started with a cough.
Just before we came home from our summer vacation in Florida, my sister and I developed a little sore throat and a cough. We never tested positive for you-know-what and my sister’s cough went away after a few days. I spent the whole month of July coughing, only getting rid of it with careful application of benzonatate and Mucinex. Then in August, I would cough maybe once a day - and it would hurt like hell in one particular spot on my right side, like someone was driving a stake through my chest. Then it would hurt when I sneezed or laughed (a very likely thing when you live with Jon). By September, it started hurting not just when I coughed or sneezed and Jon asked, “Shouldn’t you see someone about this?”
On September 17, I saw a nurse practitioner on telemedicine, who seemed like a lovely diagnostician but sent me to an urgent care because she couldn’t listen to my lungs or take a chest x-ray over the internet. The urgent care doctor gave me an inhaler, 5 days of prednisone, and creepy vibes. I was facilitating a 2 hour meeting at work when I started having trouble breathing. Talking to THAT impatient, telemedicine doctor made me realize I couldn’t breathe because I hadn’t taken Advil. Yikes.
I saw two pulmonologists. The bad one put me on a very expensive COPD drug and ordered all the tests. It was like being treated by Henry Higgins though - he never explained why I needed an allergy test, a cardio lung function test, and an EKG and ultrasound of my heart. I assume he was ruling out long Covid. He also wrote prescriptions for physical therapy and a pain specialist.
I had never heard of pain specialist doctors before. My original one reviewed what was now a page full of symptoms and treatments and offered a trigger point injections on the bad spot. It was incredible. For 2 weeks, I had no pain and everything was fine. Jon and I spent a boozy weekend in Sonoma and I looked forward to moving on with my life, to really concentrating on my new job and the exciting things going on.
The pain came back. I was waking in pain every morning, so I started sleeping in a recliner all night. Jon suggested I switch to Aleve at night, so I could sleep for more than 6 hours. The pain specialist suggested rotating which NSAIDs I was taking, to reduce damage to my kidneys, and wrote more prescriptions. I saw a good pulmonologist, who told me if trigger point injections help, it’s not a lung thing, but gave me a different steroid inhaler in case it helped.
I had made an appointment with my PT even before seeing the pulmonologist, but thought if it was a respiratory issue, it wouldn’t help. WRONG. My PT gave me all sorts of exercises - mostly variations of cat-cow - that helped on the margin, but I could tell it wasn’t going to fix the issue. He was stumped too and even carefully suggested maybe I had two different issues and that was why the problem was so intractable?
I tried acupuncture with a little old lady in Chinatown. She examined my tongue, said something about “woman hormones”, and stuck 2 dozen needles in my feet, arms, and ears. It helped the first time and the second time, the hour on my back was torture and I never went back.
I was so lost.
To be continued…
Just before we came home from our summer vacation in Florida, my sister and I developed a little sore throat and a cough. We never tested positive for you-know-what and my sister’s cough went away after a few days. I spent the whole month of July coughing, only getting rid of it with careful application of benzonatate and Mucinex. Then in August, I would cough maybe once a day - and it would hurt like hell in one particular spot on my right side, like someone was driving a stake through my chest. Then it would hurt when I sneezed or laughed (a very likely thing when you live with Jon). By September, it started hurting not just when I coughed or sneezed and Jon asked, “Shouldn’t you see someone about this?”
On September 17, I saw a nurse practitioner on telemedicine, who seemed like a lovely diagnostician but sent me to an urgent care because she couldn’t listen to my lungs or take a chest x-ray over the internet. The urgent care doctor gave me an inhaler, 5 days of prednisone, and creepy vibes. I was facilitating a 2 hour meeting at work when I started having trouble breathing. Talking to THAT impatient, telemedicine doctor made me realize I couldn’t breathe because I hadn’t taken Advil. Yikes.
I saw two pulmonologists. The bad one put me on a very expensive COPD drug and ordered all the tests. It was like being treated by Henry Higgins though - he never explained why I needed an allergy test, a cardio lung function test, and an EKG and ultrasound of my heart. I assume he was ruling out long Covid. He also wrote prescriptions for physical therapy and a pain specialist.
I had never heard of pain specialist doctors before. My original one reviewed what was now a page full of symptoms and treatments and offered a trigger point injections on the bad spot. It was incredible. For 2 weeks, I had no pain and everything was fine. Jon and I spent a boozy weekend in Sonoma and I looked forward to moving on with my life, to really concentrating on my new job and the exciting things going on.
The pain came back. I was waking in pain every morning, so I started sleeping in a recliner all night. Jon suggested I switch to Aleve at night, so I could sleep for more than 6 hours. The pain specialist suggested rotating which NSAIDs I was taking, to reduce damage to my kidneys, and wrote more prescriptions. I saw a good pulmonologist, who told me if trigger point injections help, it’s not a lung thing, but gave me a different steroid inhaler in case it helped.
I had made an appointment with my PT even before seeing the pulmonologist, but thought if it was a respiratory issue, it wouldn’t help. WRONG. My PT gave me all sorts of exercises - mostly variations of cat-cow - that helped on the margin, but I could tell it wasn’t going to fix the issue. He was stumped too and even carefully suggested maybe I had two different issues and that was why the problem was so intractable?
I tried acupuncture with a little old lady in Chinatown. She examined my tongue, said something about “woman hormones”, and stuck 2 dozen needles in my feet, arms, and ears. It helped the first time and the second time, the hour on my back was torture and I never went back.
I was so lost.
To be continued…
(no subject)
Date: 2023-03-07 08:59 pm (UTC)Hope the mystery has been resolved and that you are feeling better.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-03-17 10:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-03-08 05:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-03-17 10:12 am (UTC)