adventures in illness
Dec. 18th, 2012 03:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettI am doing that thing where I've just had a gig weekend and cold-y fever-y things are going around.
On the plus side, I haven't had a chest infection requiring antibiotics since I stopped Seretide, an inhaled steroid with the slightly unfortunate side effect of increasing the risk of pneumonia in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
... um.
... every cough I got while taking Seretide turned into a really unpleasant chest infection? It did. So there's that. And my symptoms aren't obviously inconsistent with slow-moving emphysema (some of them are also consistent with asthma, but THEN AGAIN I've had some tests done which, er, would appear to rule out asthma... which means I need another explanation for increasing difficulty breathing during exercise, exacerbated during cold weather).
Pretty much as ever, I'm finding other people's reactions to the particular manifestations of my illness really interesting. Especially, the woozl hasn't had the chance to get as finely calibrated in terms of my current general state of health as awesome-housemate-C has - C can walk into the room, take one look at me, and work out whether I'm having a good normal day or a bad normal day or whether I'm starting to come down with something and need keeping an eye on or whether I need bullying into phoning NHSDirect or taking to A&E RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. But then she has lived with me for three years...
Anyway, I spent most of today asleep and at one point this evening was kneeling on the floor and all of a sudden I needed to be horizontal right the hell now. So: controlled fall sideways, where I stayed flopped for a bit. C would give me the side-eye and shove some blood sugar and maybe a mug of tea & straw my way, then would get back to whatever she was doing; I think the woozl was a bit more worried. Me? Me, I know that that particular type of suddenly-sideways indicates that I'm not making up the mild sore throat and I'll probably be feeling pretty grim when I wake up tomorrow.
And I just - yes. These reminders of other people's normals, and of how divergent mine is from theirs, are... fascinating to me, which is possibly a bit weird and definitely a bit macabre? I'm still learning how to manage others' expectations of my ability & health - the joy of deteriorating and fluctuating chronic conditions, hurrah - and, well, this evening was an interesting object lesson.
And then we went to Ichiro, an awesome Japano-Malay fusion place that's just moved from across town to just around the corner, and then we wrote badfic & I had a detailed meta discussion of vampires in Buffy withrandomling; pondering turning it into a discussion that doesn't exist just on IRC! (we've just had s3e13 of my first full watch-through, and I have Feelings and Thorts and should maybe write some of them down at some point, but not right now.)
On the plus side, I haven't had a chest infection requiring antibiotics since I stopped Seretide, an inhaled steroid with the slightly unfortunate side effect of increasing the risk of pneumonia in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
... um.
... every cough I got while taking Seretide turned into a really unpleasant chest infection? It did. So there's that. And my symptoms aren't obviously inconsistent with slow-moving emphysema (some of them are also consistent with asthma, but THEN AGAIN I've had some tests done which, er, would appear to rule out asthma... which means I need another explanation for increasing difficulty breathing during exercise, exacerbated during cold weather).
Pretty much as ever, I'm finding other people's reactions to the particular manifestations of my illness really interesting. Especially, the woozl hasn't had the chance to get as finely calibrated in terms of my current general state of health as awesome-housemate-C has - C can walk into the room, take one look at me, and work out whether I'm having a good normal day or a bad normal day or whether I'm starting to come down with something and need keeping an eye on or whether I need bullying into phoning NHSDirect or taking to A&E RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. But then she has lived with me for three years...
Anyway, I spent most of today asleep and at one point this evening was kneeling on the floor and all of a sudden I needed to be horizontal right the hell now. So: controlled fall sideways, where I stayed flopped for a bit. C would give me the side-eye and shove some blood sugar and maybe a mug of tea & straw my way, then would get back to whatever she was doing; I think the woozl was a bit more worried. Me? Me, I know that that particular type of suddenly-sideways indicates that I'm not making up the mild sore throat and I'll probably be feeling pretty grim when I wake up tomorrow.
And I just - yes. These reminders of other people's normals, and of how divergent mine is from theirs, are... fascinating to me, which is possibly a bit weird and definitely a bit macabre? I'm still learning how to manage others' expectations of my ability & health - the joy of deteriorating and fluctuating chronic conditions, hurrah - and, well, this evening was an interesting object lesson.
And then we went to Ichiro, an awesome Japano-Malay fusion place that's just moved from across town to just around the corner, and then we wrote badfic & I had a detailed meta discussion of vampires in Buffy with
randomling; pondering turning it into a discussion that doesn't exist just on IRC! (we've just had s3e13 of my first full watch-through, and I have Feelings and Thorts and should maybe write some of them down at some point, but not right now.)