Wheezing and My ER visit

[Guest guest]

I started wheezing a lot more than usual yesterday and got tired and

short of breath after doing normally easy tasks. My mom checks with

me every day to see how I'm feeling and asked yesterday if I needed

to go to the ER. But I said no, now that I was just sitting at home

for the rest of the day, I'd be fine. The wheezing didn't keep me

from sleeping and I didn't wake up coughing at all, either.

This morning I got up early so I could get an early start on the day.

It's rehab day and I wanted to see how I felt so I could decided what

to do. In the end I decided to be careful and stopped in at rehab to

let them know I was pretty wheezy and was going across the hall to

the ER to be checked out. And prmised to come back before I took the

bus home and let them know what the ER doc said so they wouldn't

worry about me.

Turns out that yes, my lungs sounded VERY wheezy, even after I tried

to cough and clear them out. And the doc heard fluid in my lower left

lung. They gave me a neb treatment (which I don't have at home yet)

and 60 mg. of Prednisone. An x-ray showed a small amount of fluid in

the left lung. My oxygen sat was good and I only coughed

occasionally, maybe a couple of times the whole time in the ER. So I

got sent home with a script for Avelox (which I've never taken before

for anything) and Prednisone.

I'm always scared of antibiotics because some make me really sick,

hopefully this won't be one of them.

(Although it's a proven cause of weight loss for me, which wasn't

entirely a bad thing for me.)

Unlike a lot of people, I'm not too worried about the Prednisone.

I've had two kidney transplants and have been through the whole

prednisone/side effect thing many times in the past 15 years. I had a

lot of side effects and hated them when the dose was high. Now I've

been on just 5 mg. a day as a maintenance dose for immunosuppression

and don't have any problems. Last September when I developed an ugly,

barking cough and went into the ER, one of the things they did was

prescribe 60 mg. of Prednisone for a couple of days and then tapered

down. Withing a month I was back to my " regular " dose and didn't

really suffer from any side effects that I noticed. But the cough did

go away for a few weeks. Later when it came back after a lot of

doctors appointments and finally getting in to see a pulmonologist, I

was diagnosed with asthma. (My primary doc had guessed I had COPD or

maybe some weird fungal lung infection.)

Now that I've finally gotten over the shakes and headache from the

neb treatment (and no return of the wheeze), I feel prety good. So

I'm hoping these meds take care of the problem and maybe some work

with my primary doc will help too. I had to switch to her last fall

when my internist went into subspeciality and I couldn't use him as

my primary anymore. I'm not terribly confident in her; she's a family

practice doc and we don't even have any internists in my area, much

less allergists or pulmonologists. The closest ones are 100 miles

away. The pulmonologist doesn't even make visits here, unlike some

other specialists. I guess they keep him busy enough in his own area.

So, this was my first ER visit since I've been diagnosed and I'm very

glad I didn't wait to go. I was tempted at 6:30 a.m. to just call in

to Rehab and leave a message saying I was staying home because of the

cold weather (5 degrees), but I knew that was foolish, I wasn't

staying home because of that. AND I've read many posts where you all

urged each other to go to the ER and not delay. I might not have been

posting then, but I did read the daily digest so I already knew

better than to chance it. Thanks, guys!