Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Wow, that Singulair really is the magic bullet for asthma--at least my asthma. I took one yesterday and have already reduced my need for any kind of inhalers at all by about 75%.

Also realized that I hate being a patient. I often tell my clients that while I am an expert in terms of being a clinician, they are the only person who will ever be an expert on their own lives. This doctor visit reminded me not to let that concept slip away.

I have been thinking about how many things are probably dust mite havens: my futon, for example, is probably one giant 80-pound dust mite colony at this point. Plush toys would be another one. Considering that exposure during the first year of life is an important factor in developing dust mite sensitivity, I suggested to TheLimey that any potential offspring of ours would have to be kept well away from dust mite repositories during their infancy. "Ceramic cubes," he replied, "instead of soft toys* they'll have ceramic cubes." Later he softened this idea to "ceramic cubes with smiley faces drawn on".

Of course, there's always the "giant plastic gerbil ball" idea, too.


*Perhaps they could have the kind of soft toys that can be thrown in the wash on a weekly basis.

5 comments:

brainhell said...

But did SingulAir cause you to post this entry twice? :-o

brainhell said...

Those ceramic cubes will need to be 90 percent air, and very rounded, with no sharp edges.

If you really are considering matrimony with TheLimey, perhaps a public vetting would be in order, of the kind that anonymous strangers on the internet can best conduct?

Andrew said...

A ceramic cube with no sharp edges would be a mixing bowl.

argotnaut said...

I was expecting the Singulair to take at least a couple of weeks! I don't know why they were concerned that you wanted it. How do _they_ know _your_ asthma _isn't_ allergic? Harrumph.

If I'd already had all the potential offspring I'd ever talked about, I'd have a football team by now. Uh -- I don't know how many people are on a football (or meatball) team, but it's a few, I reckon.

liz said...

I still had a coughing fit last night (which triggered a number of sarcastic "That stuff is really working!" type comments from TheLimey) --but the great thing is, the coughing didn't give me a suffocating asthma attack as usual. Nope, just a coughing fit.

I can't say I'm 100% cured yet (still had to use my albuterol after racing through the cold to the clinic today), but it sure is about a zillion times better.

Yeah, that's what I thought, too--maybe I'm allergic to...I don't know, something! She was defining allergies as specifically *seasonal* allergies.

But really, *all* those inflammatory, allergy, asthma, eczema, hivey, swelly, kind of things are the same kind of biochemical response anyway. Just in different locations and within different tissues. So it seems artificial to say "Well, when it's your eyes or nose, it's allergies, but when it's your lungs, it's something else."