Thanksgiving

Today is my lovely wife's birthday.  Happy Birthday Honey.  

This week and weekend have been interesting to say the least.  I have been doing great, haven't missed any work, except for the vacation day Friday.  I say it's been interesting because we had fun, but a bug got most of us, so we are trying to feel better.  Black Friday was a total bust, all we got was a booster seat for Nehemiah, and that is because we needed it, not because it was on sale. 

As far as the what was going on before with not feeling well, I think we finally figured it out.  It was the anxiety all along.  I guess I didn't quite understand what on edge meant.  I believe I have had it for so long that everything seemed normal to me.  Maybe now I can post about other things than just myself.

This Thanksgiving I give thanks that the Lord showed us what was wrong with me.  Thank you Lord.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  Can't wait till Christmas.

Happenings

Well here we are November 17, almost 2 weeks since my first ER trip.
Here is an update on what has happened since then.

I kept feeling pretty lousy throughout most of the week. I did make it to work on the 9th till 1pm, I had an allergist appointment. That appointment went well, I'm allergic to pretty much everything except dogs, interesting I know. None of that was really anything that we didn't already now, except the dog thing. Saturday the 10th, I had another episode of shortness of breath. Valerie called our family doctor, and they talked for about 15 minutes about all sorts of possibilities. I eventually could breath better and avoided the ER. Sunday through Tuesday was more not feeling well. Wednesday and Thursday, I made it to work for half days.

Thursday evening was a turning point. We were here at home and I just couldn't catch my breath. I was trying to stay relaxed and breath slowly, which helped but didn't fix the situation. About 6:30pm I took my inhaler and again it didn't work. We call the family doctor and he thought a trip to the ER was a good thing. So we called Deb and Brian and they watched the kids, and we headed to the ER. We waited at the hospital for a while, then went through triage, and waited even longer. Finally someone took us back to a room where we waited some more. This time Dr. Woodson came and we talked for a long time. We went over how I felt, what he thought, and then I had a nebulizer treatment. In the end, we are pretty sure that I have some sort of anxiety disorder. I think I am anxious about things for no reason at all.

The nurse gave me a few nerve pills and they are upping my dose of Fluoxitine, it's an anti-depressant. Hopefully this time we have found out what the problem is.

We are still going to have some other tests and things done, but we feel pretty sure, at this point anyway, that we found what's wrong with me.

Thank you all for all of you prayers and concern through this whole thing. I hope and pray that the worst is behind us.

As a side note, I work all day Friday, I think the nerve pills help. Praise the Lord!!!

ER Trip

Today has been a rough day. This morning I woke and was going to try to get ready and see if I could go to work. I wasn't there yesterday because of my asthma. I was a little short of breath when I woke up, this is not abnormal, it happens with asthma. This is kind of where to day get rough, my problems started just after I decided that my breathing was bad enough to take my inhaler. I took 2 puffs at about 6:25am and it didn't really help, at all. I waited for a little while to see if the medicine would kick in, it never really did. At about 6:40 I woke up Valerie and told her that it had been 15 minutes since I took my inhaler, your only supposed to wait 20 before getting help. Pretty much at that point we decided to go to the ER and see what they could do. Details from about 6:50 till about 8 are a little fuzzy, lack of air and all. At about 6:55 I took another puff on the inhaler to see if it would help, needless to say, it didn't. I think it was about 7:05 when we left the house. Valerie called her mom to pick up the boys and take them to her house, and she called work to say that I wouldn't be there, I guess going to the ER warrants a day off. Once we got to the hospital, I went in and told then what was happening. They took me back to a room and hooked me up to machines, soon after that they left Valerie come in. From this point till 7:25 I only remember questions and answers. At about 7:25 they started me on a nebulizer with 3 meds. They had this run for one hour. Like I said, around 8 I started to feel more alert and I could breathe a little easier. At 8:25 they stopped the meds and gave me a chest xray and an EKG, just see how I was doing. Sometime just before 10, the ER doc came in and looked at me for about a nanosecond and left. The nurse, soon came back, we talked a little and she gave me some instructions and they put me on Prednisone (a steroid to help the asthma), and I'm also supposed to take my inhaler every 4 hours to keep my airways open, that sounds good to me. :)

After we got the prednisone, we came home and I went to bed for about 2 hours. Not having breath apparently makes you tired. ;)

Right now it's about 2:45, I'm sitting on the couch on my laptop feeling okay. Valerie and the kids went to the mall, they had stuff to do. I'm still tired, but no enough to sleep. I'm going to rest and hopefully get better soon. Hopefully everyone else's day is a lot less eventful. I'll try to write again soon to let you know how I am doing. THANK YOU for your prayers.

Asthma Info

I've been doing a lot of research the past couple of days. I have found so many interesting things, some of them apply and some don't. It says, like everywhere, that you need to have a peak flow meter, so yesterday Valerie got me one. I have had two in the past, but I could always blow them up against, which makes your readings inaccurate. Up until yesterday I thought that I somehow had a larger lung capacity than most people. I now know that that is not really true. Last night when I was trying out the peak flow meter, Valerie pointed out that I looked different than the people on the video when I blew into it, the peak flow meter came with a video and info booklet. She said somehow I looked different breathing in than the other folks, somehow I took a deeper breath than they did. This is something that I have developed over the years of asthma attacks, I use my chest and neck muscles to force more air into my lungs. This is where we come to the part that I learned today. Today I was searching how to use a meter, just in case I was doing it wrong. All the sites I visited said to take as deep a breath as you can, I was doing that, what was I doing wrong? Then I had a thought, what is the definition of a deep breath? I then searched the definition. The definition on wikipedia.com said:

Diaphragmatic breathing, abdominal breathing or deep breathing is the act of breathing deep into your lungs by flexing your diaphragm rather than breathing shallowly by flexing your rib cage. This deep breathing is marked by expansion of the stomach (abdomen) rather than the chest when breathing. It is generally considered a healthier and fuller way to ingest oxygen, and is often used as a therapy for hyperventilation and anxiety disorders.

This was actually news to me, I thought you were supposed to use your chest. When I use my diaphragm instead of my chest I get different results, I can't force extra air into my lungs, this gives me a totally different reading. Hopefully knowing about the diaphragm thing I'll be able to breathe better.

It will take about 2 to 3 weeks to establish a personal best, a guide to gauge how well your asthma is. I see an allergist on Friday the 9th, hopefully after that we'll be able to get things under control.