Randomness!

Hi Everyone,

I hope that you are all well. I just swapped my blog over from open to all comments to comment moderation. I did this mainly as a good friend of mine had been receiving some abusive comments on her blog. Although this happened a while ago now i still wanted to be able to protect myself from any similar abuse. For the most part this will not affect most of you and your comments will be published as they would have done before.

I did however receive a comment from someone this morning who had apparently stumbled upon my blog. This person had stated several questions which they wanted clarification on. So in the interests of those people who do not understand my illnesses I will attempt to explain (as briefly as I can) each of them.

I have a severe form of asthma called brittle asthma, I take a lot of medications in order to control this including oral theophyline, steroids and a drug called montelukast which I take as tablets and then a steroid inhaler, long-acting reliever inhaler and two different short acting nebulisers. My nebulisers I take every 3-4 hours through out the day and the night. Due to the amount chest infections and pneumonia's I have had over the years I now get severe pain in my chest when I try and take a deep breath.

I also have Hypoadrenalism - which means that my adrenal glands don't produce the chemical cortisol. Without cortisol your body cannot survive, you need it to regulate your metabolism, blood pressure and many other vital functions. For this I have to take regular steroid replacement therapy three times every day morning, lunchtime and evening. The hypoadrenalism tends to mean that I suffer from quite intense nausea and often this leads to vomiting also. I also have a problem with my hip, in that I get severe pain in my hip and at the end of last year my community physiotherapist and occupational therapist have insisted that I walk more regularly with a stick.

Due to both of these conditions I have to take several other medications to stop or treat side effects. These other medications include PPI's to stop my stomach producing too much acid and giving me stomach ulcers and calcium supplements to stop my bones from getting too damaged from all the steroids I take for my asthma and anti-sickness medication to stop me from being sick as this adversely affects my hypoadrenalism and can lead to an adrenal crisis if it goes untreated and finally I take a combination of pain medications for the severe pain that I have if I don't take them.

SO - That is an overview of my conditions and the treatments I take and why I take them etc. The pain medications were all started only after a thorough evaluation from the pain clinic at my local hospital and a thorough assessment whilst I was an in-patient at that same hospital to assess how often I needed them and what dosage etc etc. The same is also said for the anti-sickness medications, I have tried a range of anti-sickness medications but the hospital and I were still struggling to control my nausea and vomiting. An assessment was made of the situation and it was decided that I would start to use sub-cutaneous cyclizine. I am currently trying to stop using this as the side effects include chronic abscesses from the injection sites and a lumpy feeling under the skin where the injections have been. In the meantime I continue to use the cyclizine and trial other anti-sickness medications orally in the hope that we can switch to an oral preparation soon.

The final point Yes I do get care and it is provided by the social services. I also get DLA at the high rate for both the care and mobility component. I underwent a full assessment of need was allocated a social worker and whilst I was in hospital for a few months last year my care was organised. I may go out and about but without the care I do get I wouldn't be able to do that. My days vary, some days are worse than others, as both my main conditions are so variable. The days where I am not feeling very well I am housebound and unable to do stuff because I am either too short of breath and wheezy or having problems keeping my meds down so feeling particularly groggy.

I hope that this has given a brief overview of why at times it may seem that I am taking something that may not be prescribable to most people. Some of the medications I do take can be highly addictive and are not routinely prescribed. I do not take them for any other reason than if i didn't take my pain meds I would be in severe pain and if i didn't take the anti nausea meds I would be vomiting.

Anyways, I didn't sleep very well yesterday as i was really wheezy most of the night - i actually only managed to get it sorted at 8am this morning so I cancelled my morning call from the care peeps and then went to sleep. I have just been up a couple of hours now to get some food and check my messages when I saw a comment on my last blog entry for moderation which prompted me to write this entry. I'm gonna head to bed now as its a week full of appointments this week with at least one appointment everyday. Starting with respiratory clinic and pulmonary rehab tomorrow!!! Off to bed now as still a bit tired from yesterday!!

Will scribble again soon

Lotsa lv Rattles Xxxx