stupid lungs

well, for the last couple of years i've had chest pain/sickness of some sort the first two weeks of march, and this year it's come early along with the early spring (also known as lack of winter). saturday night i started feeling something and sunday i had a dry cough, chest pain and low fever. thought i'd stick it out, but monday i was feeling worse and the fever was slowly creeping up - it had passed 100 by the time i was on my way to urgent care after dinner (note to women in toronto: urgent care at women's college hospital is great for lack of waiting. i went there when i broke my foot, too). when i arrived, my blood pressure was on the high side (i normally have really low blood pressure) at 125 over 105 if i remember properly, pulse 76, and the bad one, blood oxygen 88. (it really oughtn't to ever be below 92).

actually probably the low blood oxygen is part of why i didn't have to wait at all. i went straight to a nice warm (80 degrees!) isolation room.

they had me blow into a thingy to measure peak oxygen, and it was in the neighbourhood of 300 or 350 (i couldn't really see) when normal for my height/age is 436.

so, they gave me basically a full day's dose of salbutamol and a full day's dose of another bronchodilator, which gave me crazy shakes/anxiety/palpitations, and then off to get a chest x-ray in a chilly room with a walk through chilly halls to get there. i must have looked quite terrible, as the radiologist was very sympathetic and told me i should ask for a pre-warmed blanket when i got back to my room (i didn't need to, the room was lovely).

of course, all of these things - the peak oxygen test, the inhalers, the exam, the x-ray - were all things they wanted me to breathe deeply for, and that's the hardest to do! i find being very still so i don't have to breathe much feels better. not the most healthy i know, but there you are.

anyway, i am pneumonia-free (yay) but taking two inhalers (a bronchodilator and a steroid) and some antibiotics for the infection (which i guess is bronchitis? i didn't even ask for the actual diagnosis, i was a bit out of it). and advil for the pain. the bronchodilator makes me shaky (i sat down at one of those pharmacy blood pressure gizmos whilst waiting for my prescriptions on the way home - my pulse was 102!) and the antibiotics upset my stomach. mainly i'm just tired and sore all the time.

and, now i'm starting to feel like i'm catching a cold (guess my resistance is low, no kidding). so i tried the neti pot this evening. not as creepy as i had feared! but weird.

i guess i do need to get sorted with a real family doctor though. i made the connection last night - my current family doctor (who i can rarely get an appointment with, and if i do she's an hour or more late, and then her office staff mess up the referrals completely) stopped being useful about the time that she introduced an "extended care" program of frills you could subscribe to for a hundred bucks a year. i didn't pay up. hmm.