Mostly recovered

[marydell]

We had a very nice turkey day, followed by Charlie having a big old allergy flareup on Friday afternoon & evening, persisting through Sunday morning. Rash, cough, vomiting, wheezing. Not a lot of fun. We think he may be allergic to dogs, since he spent most of Thursday playing with, hugging, and kissing my brother's dog and otherwise didn't have any unusual exposures.

Fortunately he was good about taking his Albuterol via nebulizer--we have an inhaler but he won't use the staging chamber thing that helps him to inhale it properly, and the neb just works better because it doesn't require him to be able to breathe well to use it. So we got through the weekend without an ER visit, yay! However the Albuterol made him hyper like whoah. Sunday night he was feeling fine, as evidenced by his getting up at 1:30 am and playing until 3 am.

Monday I dropped him off at school and took the day off from work--I only have a few days left for the fiscal year (which doesn't end until March 31) but I was at the end of my rope, so heck with it. I lay on the couch pretty much all day and it was AWESOME. I haven't taken a day off where I didn't have to do anything in, jeez, months I guess.

This morning I'm feeling pretty good--I woke up at 5:30, 30 minutes before my alarm, and was rested enough that I got up and puttered around instead of going back to sleep. And I got to take my shower without a little helper pushing me into the shower and shutting the door for me, unlike most mornings. So today it's back to the grind but it feels much less grindy.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you just really need that day off. :)

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it'll help Charlie or if it's even available for nebulizer or what but I use Xopenex, which does the bronchodilation without the hyper (er, in my case the panic attacks, memory loss, headfuzz, zoning out for minutes on end, insomnia. But in either case, Beta agonist triggered adrenalin I figure.)

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Yes, very good idea! We have given him Xopenex before, but this time around we found it had all expired (since he hasn't had a big flare up in forever) whereas we had fresh albuterol ampules in the house because Mike had recently been prescribed it in a neb form, in the same strength as Charlie's old albuterol scrip. So we used that, and it worked but DAMN. I only have an albuterol problem after my 5th hit or so, but we will be filling Charlie's Xopenex prescription toute suite! It also costs 8 times as much, OF COURSE.

Say, have you ever tried a nebulizer for your rescue agent? Unlike an inhaler, you don't have to be able to draw in a strong breath to get the full benefit of the drug, you just kind of sit there and breathe to whatever depth you can, and it does its thing. It takes about 15 minutes to get your dose but you get the full dose.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Oh yay, the xopenex rec was redundant :)
But OMG yes about the cost. If it's only 8* as much you have good insurance; I think it's been more like 20* for us.

But SO worth it to not lose a day to the cognitive effects.

I have used a nebulizer occasionally; the last time I did was with albuterol. I noticed the cognitive effects start kicking in at about 30-40 micrograms. But in my case, I've only Very Occasionally reached the point where I couldn't use inhalor + spacer, because I can feel it coming on. And my asthma's more in the continuous chronic effects range anyway.

...And, unhelpfully, one of the few surefire psychosomatic triggers I have is breathing machines. I can fight it down with a CPAP while I'm awake, but that's about it.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

We don't use the mask with Charlie's neb, and the respiratory folks said that's not a big deal as long as we keep it pointed to his face. But if the nasty grinding noise is part of your trigger, doing without a mask wouldn't help.

My albuterol inhaler costs more than it did back when I first was taking it, because they redesigned them to make them cfc-free...so they were able to get a new patent! Bye bye generics. So really the xopanex is only a little more expensive than the albuterol in inhaler form; in neb form is where we notice the difference. I am blessed with good insurance, though--a big reason I don't mind my ridiculous commute, because my company is very good about benefits. I pay about $35 for most of the fancy medicines (I just picked up my singulair today and it was about that). Charlie's new albuterol inhalers were $60 for two; no idea why they gave us both at once instead of just one. My pharmacists at CVS are better at intercepting doctor's directions and calling back to make sure it's right; Charlie's scrips are at our super-busy local Walgreens and they tend to just fill as written without second-guessing.

My doctor just recently gave me a discount card for Xopanex, some kind of promotion they're doing--your doc might have similar, depending on whether it's a regional thing.