Last week, I started up with allergies. Off and on I'd have days with sniffles, drainage, and increased cough. I've gone through like 4 boxes of tissues in the past week. It became clear that my Zyrtec wasn't working for me anymore and it was time to switch to something else. This is common—even though it sucks—where your body gets used to an allergy med and then it doesn't work anymore.
Tuesday I had a checkup with my doctor, and we agreed to give Allegra a try. And I had a good checkup, too. My PFT's were still pretty good, though not as good as a month ago when I had those unbelievable numbers. But I still had not lost much ground and I blamed most of it on the allergies.
Wednesday... totally different story. I was blowing my nose constantly and coughing my head off. It was a terrible day, and it had been a terrible night too; I got little sleep and woke up coughing 3-4 times. I was starting to worry I was sick, but it just doesn't make sense because Jarrod hasn't caught anything from me and this just feels like allergies.
Thursday I started the Allegra and noticed some improvements as far as drainage and cough, and I thought I was getting around okay until I went to treadmill... I could not breathe in deeply at all and could only make it 15 minutes. My oxygen sats were awful.
Today is worse. I'm coughing my butt off this morning and I don't even feel like I took allergy medicine.
I feel like if I'm going to have any chance of maintaining my good numbers, I need to get better fast, and that's the most frustrating part: knowing that I need to turn this around NOW, not later, and every day that I can't is another day I'm more likely to stay this way. I need to clear out the gunk in my lungs before it settles in and is harder to clear out days later.
It's just so frustrating, maddening almost. Of all the things that come with having CF, of all the daily things I go through, this is possibly the most aggravating thing of all.
It's not the 2+ hours of daily treatments, the 30+ daily pills, coughing for 1-3 hours every morning, the oxygen tubing... It's the fact that one day can be so vastly different from the next, with no apparent warning or reason. On Sunday I felt great, and did a lot at the gym, Monday was decent, Tuesday I had a good checkup, and then Wednesday it all just went to craps and all of my progress at the gym on Sunday was pointless. I'm back to square one though no fault of my own. I'm doing about everything I can to stay on top of this, yet these allergies are making my life terrible right now.
It just plain sucks and I cannot put into words how frustrated I am.
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