Scheduled checkup

I had a checkup in Columbia today. I went into it thinking all would be fine, but not so much...

My PFTs are really down. They are almost exactly at the pre-hospital levels they were in January, before I went in that time.

The weird—and sort of scary—part about this is that I don't feel all that terrible. If you would have asked me yesterday how I thought this would go, I would have said "I think I'm doing alright. I'm not at baseline, sure, but I'm not totally coughing my head off all the time either. I really don't feel all that bad." When my doctor walked in today, she expected me to look in some sort of distress, having a hard time breathing, or at the very least figured I would be coughing a bunch. None of that is happening. Even though it would have surely alerted me to the fact that I am not doing so well, in a way, it's a good thing I'm not coughing my butt off right now and feeling so run down I can barely function.

So I wonder, to myself, if my slide has been so gradual that I haven't even noticed? This is a scary thought, because I am very in tune with my body. My doctors know that about me, too. Or am I possibly kidding myself a little, thinking I'm not all that short of breath, when in fact I am? Also not really a comforting thought, but maybe a bit more plausible. Because honestly, while I was running errands tonight, I was observing just how short of breath I am walking around in a store. Maybe it's more than I was taking notice, or maybe I'm simply making more out of it now that I know, by all accounts, I should be feeling more short of breath. Who knows.

But, alas, this does mean I will be needing a hospital stay fairly soon. Maybe next week, I'm not sure. Columbia is going to be absolutely nuts this weekend with move-in weekend and people flooding in to see the eclipse. I don't really want to deal with that, plus I want to watch the eclipse from the comfort of my own home.

Our game plan right now is we are waiting to decide our game plan, haha. On Friday we'll get the results from my sputum culture, which will guide us as to which medicines we should use. I don't know that a course of oral meds at home will do me much good at this point. Not to mention, every med we use is another opportunity for one of my bugs to grow resistant to it.

It's like Jarrod reminded me: a "tune-up" is exactly that, it's maintenance. It's not intended to always be a fix for a problem. It's been almost six months since my last tune-up and oil change, lol, and that's pretty much my norm these days: going in every six months. So I guess I'm due.