These Past Four Weeks

Interesting developments this month. You know the kind, ones that put a lid on one can of worms whilst simultaneously opening twelve more. Don't worry, this isn't an angry post where I bemoan the state of the economy and all the broken promises of my youth. All things considered, I feel quite calm, if a little confused about what to do next.

It started, as always, with another fucking cold.

I've had about one a month since last August. Counting the two days I took off work at the beginning of March, I think I must have missed about four weeks' work over the past six months with being ill so often. Never mind how my employers must have felt about it - I was getting pissed off. After all, I'd been doing everything I could think of to prevent any more colds. Since my aunt was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes back in 2006, followed by my ma in 2009, I've been watching everything I eat like a hawk. My drawer at work resembles a branch of Holland and Barrett, replete with multivitamin pills, evening primrose oil capsules to iron out any kinks in my hormones, sunflower and pumpkin seeds to snack on, and raisins and goji berries to boost my immunity. For the first time in my life, I'd been eating three squares a day (breakfast? What is breakfast?) and getting in the occasional burst of exercise.

Clearly something else was afoot.

The cold went away after a couple of days, so I returned to work with a sniffle and a slightly sore chest. Trouble was, by Friday afternoon, the sore chest had developed into a full-blown wheeze and a hacking cough. "Oh crap," thought I, "it's Halloween all over again."

Turns out I was right. Stat called me an ambulance in the early hours, when the wheezing and the chest pain were so bad I couldn't sleep, and off I went to Hope Hospital. Unlike last time, where I was kept in for a suspected pulmonary embolism (eek), the doctor knew straightaway what was wrong with me.

Asthma.

I know, right? Bit weird to be diagnosed with asthma at the age of 26. Although it doesn't run in my immediate family, a few of my cousins have it. What's more, I was born with severe eczema, and I've had hayfever almost every summer since I was small. The three things - asthma, eczema and hayfever - always tend to come as a package. If you've got two, chances are you'll be diagnosed with the third at some point. The doctor at the hospital was surprised they hadn't picked up on this last time I was in hospital. *cue obligatory NHS grumble*

I was sent home after a few hours with some steroids and a set of inhalers, and spent most of the next week (I was on leave anyway, you see) in bed. I got tired very easily, and my chest took a long time to stop being so painful. Stat helped me clear out the back bedroom, to turn it into a little recovery space for when I felt bad. We aired it out, made up the bed, and moved the Wii in there so I could do my yoga stretches in peace.

My plan for the week had been to get some hardcore Warcraft play in, which would have been an ideal chance for my chest to get itself rested. But even this was thwarted when, halfway through the week, my dearly beloved computer Calcifer up and died. He'd been my faithful companion ever since Matt put him together for me on Evil Day in 2006, and he'd never grumbled, not once. Yet when I was asleep one night, Calcifer turned himself off and couldn't be rebooted. Nothing internally seems to be wrong with him, so hopefully my hard drives can be salvaged from him. We took in an old computer from some friends of ours, so thankfully I managed to get back onto Warcraft the following night, but it was traumatic to lose an old friend so suddenly. A moment of silence, please, for Calcifer - and also one for Diana Wynne Jones, who passed away yesterday and whose book 'Howl's Moving Castle' gave Calcifer his name. What a fantastic writer she was!

I went back to work the following week, feeling better overall, but also pretty delicate, as though a gust of wind could have knocked me over. Well, it turned out not to be a gust of wind, but workmen. They were replacing the ceiling tiles in reception at work, and although they did the work while I was away from my desk for an afternoon, it still went wrong. Bless those guys, they were lovely, but what on earth was the point of putting a dustsheet over my desk if all they did was shake it out over the carpet when they were done? Five minutes at my desk was all it took to set me off.

Leaving work with a great deal of pain in my chest, I called my GP first - they couldn't fit me in, and told me to go to the walk-in centre. So I jumped in a cab, and by the time rush hour traffic had let us through there I was in agony. I got to the desk at the walk-in, practically begging the receptionist for an inhaler - my reliever had run out just that morning. Timing, eh? Seeing my need, the receptionist sent me in straightaway to see a nurse, who may have been the biggest idiot I've ever met in my life. Asking me all sorts of stupid questions when he could see I was having trouble breathing, he promptly ignored my diagnosis of asthma and told me I had pericarditis. Now, I'm no doctor, but I know enough of medical terms to know that "card" means "heart" and "itis" means "inflammation". (Stat looked it up for me afterwards.) If you're thinking WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK, don't worry. So was I.

Let me tell you, sobbing whilst having difficulty getting the air in your lungs to sob is bloody painful. Not to mention that this chump insisted on crowding me. OH OH OH and he had an argument over the phone with the 999 operator who was sending out the ambulance. Just to, you know, reassure me and everything. If I'd had the energy in me, I'd have hit this fucking guy.

Just my luck that Salford was full of accidents and emergencies that night. The ambulance took 45 minutes to arrive (that's right, 45 minutes with Chump Change for a nurse and no painkillers), and the staff at Hope's A&E department were overworked, to put it politely. Or, to put it truthfully and not at all politely, they were bloody ignorant. The nurse did another ECG on me, ignoring the results from the ECG I'd had in the ambulance that I was waving at her. I asked her to call Stat for me and get him to come down. She told him that I was fine and that he didn't need to come to the hospital. The doctor I saw - once - took some blood without apologising for being "vicious" (her word, not mine). Aside from these, I was left alone for three hours. Three hours, in agony, with no pain relief, no nebuliser for my breathing, nothing.

After thinking he'd abandoned me to my fate, Stat eventually showed up at A&E. He told me what the nurse had said to him on the phone, which made my mind up. I demanded FUCKING PAINKILLERS NOW, brought in by a sheepish nurse who mumbled something about a changeover, and once he'd left the room I downed the codeine, got dressed and stormed out of A&E to a chorus of horrified stares from doctors and nurses alike and leaving Stat to explain behind me. (Stat is very good at explaining my anger to other people. I tend to lose my faculties of speech when I'm angry, which I most definitely was.)

The codeine kicked in once I was safely back in bed at home, and Stat took a call from the vicious doctor, now very apologetic about how I'd been treated, and also angry at Chump Change for scaring me half to death with the pericarditis nonsense. It really had just been another asthma attack. The next morning, I got the inhaler I'd needed all along from my now-not-busy GP, and I went back to work. Funny how getting back to work can be such a relief after a blazing trauma.

So this week, I've concentrated on getting my wobbly lungs back to normal. I had another week off work (two weeks off, but not a fortnight... long story, too dull for blogaroo) so I went down to Shropshire for a few days, where the country air set me straight, the dentist gave me a clean bill of health and I nearly ruined my folks' computer with Warcraft. When I got back to Manchester, my GP upped my inhaler dosage slightly, and Stat gave me lots of cuddles and baked me a cake. He always misses me when I go away for a few days, bless his heart.

I'm still adjusting to the idea of having asthma. Like the diabetes I'm trying to avoid, it's something I've got to live with from now on. It's never going to go away. Even now, although I feel a hell of a lot better than I did when my chest first started getting bad, I don't feel normal. I wonder if I ever will again. I wonder if I'll ever sing again. Hmm. A can of worms, indeed.