Wednesday, February 15, 2017

The state of the allergies

I started on my allergy injections right after the first of the year.  I knew it was going to take a few months to see any real improvement, but when I was still coughing my head off a few weeks in, I begged for mercy, and they gave me steroids, which worked like magic.  No more coughing!

And the thing that was most amazing to me was how much more ENERGY I had.  Turns out that spending half of every night awake bc coughing tends to be draining!  Who'd a thunk it?  I've been off the steroids for a couple of weeks now, and while I do have the occasional coughing spell, it's only a few times a day now instead of a bunch.  AND now I know that if the coughing worsens, I can always go on the Prednisone again, so THAT's a relief.

There was one little complication with the injections - my clothes.  See, they give you the shots in your upper arms, and I kept forgetting and wearing long-sleeved sweaters or tops on shot day, and it was a pain in the a** to try and get those sleeves rolled up high enough for the needles.  So now I keep a "shot shirt" at work - a plain black short-sleeved t-shirt.  If I forget and wear something long-sleeved to work, before I head over to my allergist's for my shots, I just change into the shot shirt and I'm good to go.

I'll have to have once-weekly double injections for another few months as they ramp up the dose, and then they'll start lengthening the time between injections.  From what I understand, how long I'll have to have the injections depends on how well I respond, so we'll just have to wait and see.

It's okay.  I don't mind.  I'll be the one over here, not coughing.






2 comments:

the queen said...

I'd attribute the extra energy to the steroids themselves. It's a little dose of mania. I have great energy and spend lots of money on steroids, because they make me manic. Don't make any big decisions on steroids.

Connie - Tails from the Foster Kittens said...

shot shirt.. very clever!