Asthma!

I have asthma.  Not the "run out of breath, pass out" kind of asthma, I have Cough Variant Asthma.  The kind that makes you cough pretty much non stop once it is out of control.  Not a productive cough...a shallow irritating cough that will.not.go.away.  I did not always have this issue, either.  It started gradually in my late 30's while living in the Sacramento Valley, and progressed as time went on. I manage to keep it controlled most of the time with Zyrtec, singular, and advair daily.  I have been taking these drugs for almost 10 years now. Usually I will get a flare up if I am stressed out (not very often), the air quality is particularly bad or if I get sick.

My Dr is the best. She is very proactive about keeping this under control...she insists of flu shots every year, she gave me a whooping cough vaccine booster this spring, pneumonia shots...everything. If I get a flare up she gets me right in to listen to my lungs etc. But it is frustrating for me....one minor head cold and I am down for the count for weeks afterward trying to get my asthma under control again.  And it seems like as I get older the less resilient I am to recovery.

My husband vacuums the house, and brushes the dogs every day in an effort to keep the dander in the house down. (I will never ever not have dogs). We invested in an air cleaner when we replaced the old forced air heater. I sleep with an air filter on every night. Actually, I can't sleep without the "white noise" it makes after so many years of having it on.  So, even in my day to day life I am effected by my asthma. How to prevent it, and how to get it back under control.

Right now I am battling a flare up from a cold I got 2 weeks ago. I am taking oral prednisone (on top of the zyrtec, singular and advair), and have been for almost 2 weeks now. It makes me jittery, spacey, grumpy and ravenous. This time it does not really feel like it is helping with the cough. I have stayed home from work this whole week in hopes that keeping quiet and not moving around too much will help quiet the spasms.  I *think* it is helping, but I hate missing so much work and having so little fun!

This morning I found a blog from a mother who has a small child suffering from the same thing, and it chronicles her attempt at getting her sons asthma under control. He takes all the same drugs as I do, but she had some ideas about nasal cleansing, sudafed, probiotics and a few other homeopathic treatments that are interesting. I am going to try some of these things and see what happens.

So, this morning in addition to my normal daily meds I added in a neti pot nasal wash and 1 sudafed.  I am also still taking my pred, but I am in the taper off mode now.  I go back to work tomorrow for 1 day and then I have the weekend off. Hopefully this will work.