COPD or I Think I'll Get Another Opinion

So, I was not getting any better from my sickness. I would have a good day, then two bad days. Or I would feel better, start trying to check off my list, and slide backwards into feeling basically like crap. So, I called a doctor. One reason I was hesitating on this is because I really love my doctor back in Texas, and since I haven't been sick since we've been up here full time, I haven't had the need of a local doctor. Didn't know who to go do. My SO went to a doctor here once last winter, so I tried calling him. Frankly, I wasn't that upset when I was told I could see THAT doctor until mid-week next week. Because, well, he's a D.O. rather than an M.D. and I have these prejudices. Anyway, they told me that the only opening they had was with their newest associate, a M.D., to the clinic, and I could see her the next morning at 11:30. Fine. I am spoiled by my Texas doctor who, when he knows you are truly sick, will work you in that afternoon. And I was obviously sick -- I could barely talk above a whisper. But they were going to make me wait until the morning. Fine....

I thought I would wake up the next morning feeling well, and call to cancel the appointment as soon as they opened. But there were some things that happened to change that plan. Namely my SO, who showed up here at 9:30 pm having driven straight through, 16 hours, from Texas just so he could be here to take me to the doctor the next morning. He had been worrying about me, and hated being so far away, and when I told him I had made the appointment, he drove like a maniac to get here to make sure I MADE that appointment. He thought I had pneumonia. He wasn't far wrong. This was the clincher -- him making that desperate drive. But the second thing that happened is that I was coughing so hard, really the hardest cough I have ever had, that I threw up. Literally. Right on the bathroom floor. Jeez! Did I need THAT to clean up. Answer -- no. But I realized that this cough is really a bugger-bear, not normal at all, or productive enough, and even my ribcage was starting to hurt from this violent cough. Maybe I had whooping cough -- I'd read where it was making a comeback. And besides all that, I really wasn't feeling good enough the next morning to call and cancel, so I let my sweetheart drive me the 26 miles into town, and I made the doctor's office.

They had a ream of papers for me to fill out that took over 30 minutes. Apparently, I gleaned from some of the questions and statements I had to sign, that there is a big narcotic drug problem in Las Vegas, NM -- ya think! Maybe that explains all the violent headlines in the local newspaper. I told the lady at the counter that I felt like I was applying for a mortgage. She said I ought to have to make all the copies once I was finished.

I liked the doctor. She was, I would say about 38, young, smart, straight-talking. She told me she believes I have COPD. What?!!!!! Aka Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. No way, I said. She said that even though I have been a non-smoker for 20 years on my last birthday, I still have lung damage. I argued that the last time I'd had a chest X-ray, right before I had the breast biopsy in 2008, the doctor had told me that I had the lungs of a person who had never smoked, that you could not tell I had smoked 10 packs of cigarettes a week for 19 years. He said that! She just smiled, gave a head shake, and went on to tell me about how COPD presents itself in these bouts of acute bronchitis, and that I was not moving good air through my lungs. She said she thinks I have about 93% of my lungs at this stage, but that there is a test that will definitively diagnose COPD and that she would like to perform that test if I would like her to in about thirty days, once the infectious bronchitis I have now is taken care of. I liked her, as I said, but I got my back up about this. I refused to believe I have COPD. I said that I was going to be seeing my doctor in Texas on the 23rd of September and I could get him to do the test. She said that would be fine, and proceeded to take down all his information so she could forward her reports to him. How presumptuous of her!

Then she said that she was going to go get prescriptions she wanted me to take to clear up this bronchitis, and left the room. I laid there with my head spinning. I cannot have COPD. That is an incurable disease that can kill you! My SO had a woman he worked for who died from it about three years ago. She'd had a lung transplant and everything. I would go to my Texas doctor and together we would just decide that I had FINALLY developed asthma. I'd had an allergy doctor tell me I was borderline asthmatic back in the 90s.

She came back in and I attacked her with questions. She explained that asthma is usually something that begins in childhood. I gave her my whole history with allergies, shots, yada, yada. She sat down and listened. I said, "Can't this be asthma, or allergies, or what do you think?" She looked clearly at me. "I think it's COPD. But we need to do that test to get a definitive diagnosis." And I'm sitting there thinking, what do you have to gain from me having COPD? Are you being paid by somebody to prescribe COPD medicine? Is this just the designer disease of the year? Is there some ulterior motive for you telling me all of this? Why do you hate me?

She explained what she wanted me to do with all the drugs she was prescribing. Prednisone to get me through this bad bout of bronchitis -- which was caused, she said, by a viral infection that went into a secondary flareup, namely bronchitis. I have taken prednisone. It makes you feel like you can conquer the world. It's what the vet gave Trouser the last three months of his life. The next thing was an antibiotic, and amoxicillian combo to kill the infection. The third, and most important she said, thing was an inhaler, combivent. If this thing really helps you, she said, it will be a step towards us looking further into the COPD. Ah-ha!! Could this be the drug she was taking payoffs on? And then she gave me a steroid nose spray -- yeah yeah, been there done that. A million times. They make my nose bleed. But I've made my prescription drug deductible. I took it from her. She said go home, throw away the cough medicine I had been taking, and to take Mucinex without the D. And all this in addition to my blood pressure and cholesterol, etc etc. I really feel like a little old lady, now, with a pill despenser so I can keep track of what all I've taken each day.

Speaking of little -- I had lost 10 pounds. The only good side effect from all this. Don't mean to be so shallow. I celebrate any effortless weight loss, ok?

So we stopped off to fill the prescriptions, and I was really fading by the time we got home. My SO made me take a nap. I laid there on the bed and my mind was still reeling, but a little slower now. I remembered way back in 2000 when I had been admitted to the hospital emergency room with a BIG infection following my hysterectomy. The staff was more worried about the lack of oxygen in my blood than they were about my reddening incision area. The kept running test, took me to nuclear medicine, drew blood. And then I thought about how I cannot seem to get acclimated to this altitude, and we are coming up on one-year of being here full time. I walk the dog and come back so winded I can't move off of the couch for thirty minutes. Just bringing the groceries in from the car down in the carport takes the air out of me so much that I have to sit down before I can unload them into the pantry or the fridge. And climbing Mount Capulin when the boys were here last year, that seriously nearly killed me. Everybody was laughing at me, but I was in super distress. I tried to laugh it off, too, but it aggravated me how they would not take my situation seriously. They just thought it was because I'm out of shape. Well, there is that, but I do have breathing problems, too. Real breathing problems. My SO is constantly asking me if I'm "whipped out." His question, asked when he hears me gasping, also makes me angry.

Why the anger? I'm not sure. Maybe because I watched my mother die from lung cancer. And my grandmother from congestive heart failure. Both of them cause breathing problems. I try to take care of myself. I am not a svelte 20 year old and I see people my age who look better than I do, but I have never been sickly, in fact, have always hated to be sick. I have always been energetic. Nothing bores me more -- usually -- that to sit on my butt in front of a television, or to just sit doing nothing. That's just not me, never has been. I have to be busy, gardening, cooking, cleaning, even reading has become harder to do over the years, and makes me wish I liked audio books more so I could read and go. I am too young to get an incurable disease! I just am! But in my heart of hearts, I think this doctor may be right.

I joined an online forum. I've been reading posts other people with COPD have written. I'm encouraged that it is something that can be managed, but I still don't want it to be ME! I really do have a doctor's appointment with my old Texas doctor when we go back at the end of September. I thought I was just going for my yearly blood check so he would refill my blood pressure and cholesterol meds. But I guess I should probably call them on Monday with this latest news, because I think this doctor I saw Friday really is going to get in touch with him if I don't, or even it I do. She didn't seem like the kind who would make idle threats. Or diagnoses, for that matter. I'm not happy about all this, but I would like to know one way or the other.

Onward ....

Christmas Eve Morning

A cold steel gray dawn, with chipping sparrows at the feeder. My SO had a hard night, snorting fits, sniffly, stuffy nose. Cedar fever. So early this year. He won't admit it's allergies, but I recognize all the signs. He keeps saying he's never had allergies so why would they start harassing him now? I have a theory about that. I consider myself a semi-scholar on the subject of allergies, having done battle with them for most of my life. I think in his case radiation damage has caused his nasal passages, indeed all of his sinuses, to become more receptive to histamine production. A leftover from the throat cancer that laid him low seven years ago. He has more leftovers than just this one. Another subject for another day. He managed to get back to sleep. I crept out of the room a little before six.

It's Christmas Eve. A blustery norther is set to arrive, as are my oldest son and his partner. In an ideal world their plane will arrive at 3:30 this afternoon, and then they'll face a three hour drive in a rental car to get here. Fingers are crossed that all goes as planned. But it's Christmas Eve, and half the country is buried under a blizzard, so we shall see how their travel proceeds. We think if they can get to and out of Baltimore, things should go well from there.

The anticipation of this day has left me feeling somewhat subdued now that it's here. I think the big Sunday we had, full of people and food, and laughter and noise, has made everything else about the holidays somewhat anti-climatic. But my son is such a pleasure to be around -- I say that not just as a proud mother -- but as someone who has observed him for these long 38 years, and it hasn't gone unnoticed that he has an abundance of friends, both old and new, and an aptitude for making things fun and meaningful. He is and has always been a bit of an amazement to me. Even as a baby, an old soul in a tiny body, somehow wiser than he should have been, witty and wonderfully sensitive to the needs of those around him. I am awed that I should have -- could have -- raised such a person, although he never needed much "raising" in the strictest sense. It's been five months since I have seen him, and so I will tick off the hours until the two of them arrive.

We'll save the big Christmas celebration for tomorrow, an oddity for our family. We've always tended to do the most celebrating on Christmas Eve. But travel days are throw-away days, and we'll wait it out until tomorrow, with everyone refreshed. Daddy and his dog will be here, and we plan to cook steaks, weather permitting. No provincial stuffed turkey for this bunch. We're having rib eyes, corn pudding, and baked bread. My only nod to tradition will be the green bean casserole, or should I say, THE green bean casserole, because it's different, more substantial and better, than the one everyone else makes. Ours has bacon and cheese and bread crumbs and sauteed onions included, and no one can eat this particular green bean casserole and ever look again at the one the rest of the world prepares with anything but contempt. Yes, we are smug about our green bean casserole.

My son has requested pecan pie. I don't think they make many pecan pies up in the DC area. Or else, as he says, they "f" it up with raisins or some other silly ingredient. So I'll make that today, and maybe the time will go by a bit faster.

I hear my SO stirring in the other room. The cat at my feet has also stretched and wakened. The sky is lighter than it was when I began this. Sun a big butterscotch wafer rising over the oak trees lining the creek below our place. Time to get the day started.

Merry Christmas to all!

Onward ....