Yeah, I'm down with the sickness. A chest cold, to be precise.
I've had bronchitis once a year pretty much my whole life. It sets in around late November, and keeps me chunking up lung until about mid-March.
A couple years ago, a doc diagnosed me with asthma, and asked if I got bronchitis a lot. "No, not much. Once a year, roughly. For about four months. My rugby mates always got a kick out of me coughing up blood after doing Henny Meullers. (800m intervals on the rugby pitch).
The doc said I had mild asthma, and said, "Let me guess. Starts with a cold, you get post nasal drip, you get a sore throat, the cold moves to your chest, you cough a lot, then one day you wake up and you are coughing green, and medicine doesn't help. The cough is worse in cold weather, and when you exercise."
I stopped my mouth for a change, and let it fall open. How did he know?
Other docs had thought that I had a viral bronchitis, some had treated me for a bacterial bronchitis, it didn't matter. It was always hard to kick.
This doc summed it up. "You have asthmatic bronchitis. It's not uncommon. The trick is to keep from getting bronchitis. You do this by treating the asthma and the cold. Use this Advair inhaler once or twice a day. Use this bronchio-dialator before exercising, especially in the cold, or if its dusty. If you start getting a cold, irrigate your nose a couple times a day with regular saline solution nasal spray, it'll keep the nasal problems from irritating your throat, because if that gets irritated, you will cough, it will get raw, and then you will get the infection."
Sure enough, that fixed it. I haven't had bronchitis for two years now, and the exercise-induced major coughing fits... well, they are better. On high allergen days, when it's cold out, it can get rough. The Coppis enjoyed my display during one Wednesday hill ride. I coughed out a small cat, basically, and was wheezing loud enough to qualify as a woodwind instrument in the local orchestra. Some even said it rivalled one of Giacomo's famous coughing and choking fits, but we all know that's not true.
So right now, I have one of my two winter colds. I actually like getting a cold in early October, because it means I will probably be cold-free until sometime around February. I can live with it. So it's lighter duty training than usual, hitting the Advair once a day, trying to remember to take the bronchio-dialator before riding, and (the best part) squirting that God-awful saline solution up my nose, where it drips into my throat. Mmmm, yummy. It's like getting barf after effects, without getting the pre-barf drinking. But at least it keeps me relatively healthy.
So this all sucks, but dealing with the cold and asthma and bronchitis pre-emptively sure beats getting it, then trying various medicines, all of which fail. And it sure as sh1t beats coughing up blood every time I go for a run or a ride.
Yeah, I'm down with the sickness.
Any of you got any medical miracles / disasters you have to overcome in order to ride, or to do your own thing? Let's hear about it in comments if you do.
4 comments:
Aah, bronchial asthma, my nemesis all through the teen years.
Come and visit Oz. It's only getting down to 60 f'n heit at night here. Spring has sprung.
Without my Allegra, I'm a giant ball of snot. It's not pretty! But, in addition to the allergies, I definitely have that whole exercise-induced asthma thing, though I've never sought to have it treated. It gets much worse as the weather gets cooler. One day recently it was rather brisk at noon at Hains Point, causing me to have coughing fits through the afternoon when I returned to the office. My office mate -- who poo-poos all my cycling-related activity anyhow -- suggested to me that all this coughing was proof-positive that exercise is, in fact, bad for you.
Man, that asthma is really common in cyclists, isn't it?
I wonder if the massive volumes of oxygen (along with various pollutants) getting pushed through the lungs gum up the works? I've always had it apparently, and much to my consternation, my almost-3-year-old son seems to be prone to bronchitis. Maybe it's just bum lungs.
My best ever effort, Chris, was a ride in 10 degree weather last winter. I went around the BWI Airport loop one time. Around halfway, I started having a massive, massive asthma attack. I couldn't breathe and thought I was going to die. There was only one thing to do.
Go home, light a fire in the fireplace, and drink a lot of bourbon.
What does it get down to in Oz during the winter, Mike? 45 F?
From late June through to the end of July I suffer from a dozen or more overnight minimums around 4-7 celcius (39-45 eff'n heit). Those same cold days get up to around 13 celcius (55F).
Of course that's just my location (6.72415S 153.0668E) 400 miles on the polar side of the Tropic of Capricorn. I'm roughly the same distance from the equator as Palm Beach FL and actually closer to the equator than Corpus Christi TX. Except we don't have Cubans or Mexicans knocking on our door. But as I've said before this is a big place. Mainland Australia is over 4500km (2800mi) from north to south and wider than that. So we have places like Melbourne with New York weather, or Sydney with D.C. weather if you like.
Post a Comment