Friday, February 26, 2010

Update on Mom's Asthma

Two quick things:

  • First of all, I doubled my Asmanex dose, so now I'm doing two puffs in the AM and in the PM.Within 48 hours of dose-doubling, my cough pretty much stopped completely - despite the fact that I seem to have a head cold. Pretty impressive. Still need albuterol from time to time (like right now, in fact), but sooooo much better!
  • Secondly, I found this article on cough-variant asthma, and it's seems 100% like what I've got. Cold air and strong smells are definitely among my biggest triggers, and I don't think I've ever wheezed.

The timing for the sudden improvement is pretty fortuitous. I have a singing gig every Friday night in March, and I was in no shape to perform. The big concern: My accompanist has about 5,000 cats, and his whole house does kinda reek of cat pee. Should make for a fun rehearsal. I'll definitely bring the MDI!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm not strictly "cough-variant" because I do wheeze on occasion (I have to be borderline red before I start wheezing though), but I'm mostly cough-variant. The irritating thing is that most non-asthma specialists don't hear a wheeze and assume you're doing better than you really are.

If you're cough-variant, a peak flow meter might not do you as much good, but it's still a really good idea, just on the offchance that it does help.

A scarf wrapped around your face might help with the cold air, and if strong smells trigger you, you might want to see if you can identify whether or not certain strong smells are more likely to trigger you, and if that's the case, allergy testing might be a good idea (a couple of my allergies ONLY affect my asthma - I don't get hives, runny nose, sneezing or anything like that. Cats is a really good example; I'm crazy allergic to them, but I react by having really bad asthma attacks. I don't break out in hives unless I get scratched, and I don't sneeze or get watery eyes from them).