I decided that since it was so fun to write during the Blogathon that I really ought to be more verbose here at the yla and get my money out of it. Or something. So here are some bullets. They are my favorite copout:

● I am one of the most honest people you will ever meet. Sometimes I choose the wrong words.

● Pointy shoes make my legs look fatter than they are. Which is already fat.

● I have big giant sunglasses I bought in the $1 section at Target. They’re pretty hot until you get them in the light and notice that the tortoise-shellness of them is actually just brown triangles that kind of remind me of a pink and purple Trapper Keeper I really wanted in the early 90s. I got a rabbit one for my 10th birthday.

● What were those locker backpacks called? That’s what they call them in Utah—backpacks. Back in the home country of the South, they call them bookbags.

● Carrie, people look at me sideways when I say “ponytail holder.” And no one ever makes me any buttermilk pie. Wah.

● My tummy wants cupcakes.

● The air quality is bad today. The UV index is high. I think that means that it’s time for everyone to go home to bed.

● I think I’ll leave up the Blogathon skin until I can do something else, because the paisley seems kind of dull now. I’ll eventually take down the links that may make people think it’s now. Or soon. Or something.

● The student advisor I went to on Thursday told me a whole lot of nothing, and he definitely didn’t tell me I don’t need a degree, which is kind of what I wanted to hear, so I fired him.

All kinds of fun. And at this point, I am kind of just typing to keep from falling asleep. Please do not hate me for it. Also, I know this sounds very—feel badly for me because asthma is hoooooooorrible—but please know it’s just that latter part. Sympathy is for suckers. I’m a non-sucker. Literally.

Because I was treated so many times in the offices of my pediatrician, pulmonologist, allergist, general practitioner, and local emergency room, for anything from spontaneous asthma “attacks” to lengthy bouts of pneumonia, which kind of looked at my inhaler and nebulizer sideways and laughed, I was on antibiotics, a lot.

I know a lot of people will refuse an antibiotic unless absolutely necessary because of the risks of developing resistance to the drugs, but my infections were always “that” bad. They just happened to invade my body every single month for three years, and every few months in the years before and since.

I started out behind, because before any of the multitudinous mucousy families moved into my lungs, I’d already developed allergies to the penicillins and cephalosporins. They give me hives. And make me puke.

I downed the Z-Packs of Zithromax/azithromycin (macrolides) like they were little pink candies full of bacteria-eating health. Until they stopped working. Because that’s what happens. Resistance.

Next was Biaxin/clarithromycin (another macrolide), which worked so very well until I was sitting in Mr. Totten’s English class in 10th grade and discovered a rash working its way up my legs. It took me over, the rash. And then Biaxin was out. And also Erythromycin as a viable macrolide because my lungs looked at those and said HA you are not PINK and your name is hard to say for someone with an ‘r’ problem. And then in protest, my body rejected Erythromycin too.

Levaquin was a fairly new option in the fluoroquinolones when I was 16 years old, but I had to wait until I was 18 because of its pesky habit of kasploding people’s achilles tendons. That is unfortunate. The physician’s assistant at the general practitioner’s office started me on some of this promising miracle drug when I was 17-and-a-half. And it worked. And I was clearing up in the normal 48 hours. And I continued in that fashion. For three whole more years. Levaquin took me to Paris and it brought me to Utah. I still got sick, but it was checked quickly, by golly.

Until recently, when my trusty Lev left me for someone elses lungs and staged a protest of civil disobedience. So. Left with few options, and in a fit of utter frustration, my new general practitioner prescribed Clindamycin of the lincosamides. The only problem is that I kind of got depressed when I read the 17 warning labels on the bottle and literature about severe gastrointestinal distress. And stats like 2-10% of patients developing pseudomembranous colitis aren’t promising. “Potentially fatal,” isn’t really a good trade-off for a drug that’s supposed to get rid of my bronchitis.

It should also be mentioned, for the sake of insomnia, that when I was 14 years old, I overdosed on a combination drug containing pseudoephedrine as a result of miscommunication between the doc-in-a-box physician and the filling pharmacist. Overdosing on pseudoephedrine can mean tachycardia and decreased oxygen saturation. Fortunately, I was at the allergist’s office and the nurse noticed that my heart rate ought not to be 160 beats per minute resting.

So then, no more pseudoephedrine. Which means no more Sudafed. Which means that when I do get sinusitis, I can’t get any relief from a fast-acting decongestant and have to rely on the antibiotic to clear things up before I find and kind of rest from the snot.

So yeah. There we go. I can’t take a lot of drugs because they don’t work on me. And that is unfortunate—but what’s unfortunate is that so many people live with asthma and face the same difficulties in treating peripheral conditions because of the broader spectrum of asthma’s affects on the body.

So, yay for the American Lung Association.

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I participated in the 2006 Blogathon—one post every 30 minutes for 24 hours—on 29-30 July 2006, to benefit the American Lung Association. I’ve hidden the boring posts, but left the somewhat legible ones.

Other stuff besides making you feel desperate enough to breathe that you might even consider choosing something other than Trident even though the other four like it. Because I have what my pulmonologist called severe asthma, I have to be extremely careful with my allergies and any sort of respiratory illness at all. Or any illness that may someday think about looking at my lungs from seven miles away.

When I was in the 8th grade, the pediatrician suggested an allergist, so I went in for testing. They poked my back up something awful, and wouldn’t you know I reacted to every single allergen, save two types of mold that don’t even grow in North America? When they ran out of room on my back, I was injected in my arms. That’s when I reacted to every single allergen there including the control. So it had to be done again. With only saline as the control.

The allergist suggested hyposensitization (allergy shots) and I went for my twice-weekly appointments in a really non-committal religious fashion. Nana was a trooper and drove me to most appointments, and then sat with me for the requisite 20 minutes, to make sure the shot of what I may be deathly allergic to that had been injected inside of me didn’t make my throat close up. Because then I would be dead.

Drugs I have taken because of my asthma—either directly or indirectly—in various combinations and in various dosages and in various formats during the last 10+ years:

Albuterol MDI
Albuterol neb
Prednisone
Cortisone subQ
Xolair neb
Pulmocort neb
Advair MDI
Aerobid
Xopenex neb
Serevent MDI
Flovent MDI
Singulair
Benadryl
Allegra
Claritin
Rhinocort
Astelin
Nasonex
Zyrtec

You may be aware that several of those drugs aren’t indicated for asthma—but that’s where the whole indirect thing came up. I was so allergic that I had to keep the allergies under control so the asthma was under control. Others are asthma control meds as well as asthma rescue meds and asthma nebulizer meds.

It was kind of a drag to have to cart my nebulizer on my senior trip to the UK. And to have to use it there. So far away from home. And in Paris.

This stuff, this asthma, it isn’t kidding.

Next up? The drugs I can’t take because of the asthma. And then? The other ways in which my body has been broken in exchange for fighting for the opportunity to breathe.

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I participated in the 2006 Blogathon—one post every 30 minutes for 24 hours—on 29-30 July 2006, to benefit the American Lung Association. I’ve hidden the boring posts, but left the somewhat legible ones.