Stale air

Not since 1985, when a fabled Cape Verde type hurricane named Gloria swept through New York, have I been hospitalized with asthma or breathing difficulties. I suppose this past Tuesday was the every 20+ year exception.

I've been sick a lot over the last 4 months. In early November, I woke up one morning with a severe case of diarrhea and nausea. After completely emptying my stomach out and being unable to vomit or shit anything else, Haley got a little tired of my guttural dry heaves and convinced me to visit the emergency room of Long Island College Hospital. Luckily, LICH is right next door to our apartment. Seeing as I was not capable of doing much more than making the "I'm going to puke now" face, the hospital's proximity to my toilet was a good thing.

On account of having thrown up in excess of 4 hours and over ten times, I was fast tracked to the emergency room. Many IVs later and I was replenished and released, probably to the delight of Aetna.

In December, I developed a thrush infection on my tonsils that was so severe, my dentist made me get it checked out by a doctor before doing a procedure on my gums. It finally went away for good a couple of weeks ago.

My breathing problems began last Monday night, right before going to bed. Labored breathing normally doesn't affect me because it's par for the course with asthma. You just take a little puff of an inhaler and you're good as new. On Monday, I must have used my inhaler 10 times and it did little to alleviate my asthma symptoms. How I made it through work and then therapy on Tuesday is a mystery to me. I got home and let Haley know that I needed to go to LICH.

Did I mention that I haven't been to the hospital with asthma in over 20 years? Yeah. The ER nurse hands me some contraption and I just shrug.

"You've never used one of these??"

"No" It's a nebulizer, she tells me, and it's going to help me breathe again. Awesome.

Then she thrusts some kazoo-looking thing at my lips, again, under the assumption that I know what it is. This one is called a peak flow meter and it measures the force of your breath. Normal is 450. I blow 150. She tells me I'm going to need "the pipe." That's the little pet name they give the nebulizer. In a pulmonic sense, I felt ostracized by my meager knowledge of these instruments.

Two and a half hours later, I was discharged with a considerably clearer chest. They put me on Prednisone, a kind of steroid. Now I'm moody, restless and bored.

The medicine can be worse than the disease, can't it?