keith

Been pretty sick this week. Started last week, but caught up with me Wednesday. Called in sick for work that day, but came in the next day. The Vice President of my department heard me coughing and sent me right back home -- call-center, you definitely don't want anyone giving everyone a lung bug. Anyway, went to the doctor today, he said I have another "upper respiratory infection" and chronic asthma. Boy, life sure is different when you have insurance. In years past, the doctor would've just given me some samples of antibiotics and wished me well.

Not when you've got good insurance, though. They gave me a breathing treatment of some steroids dissolved into vapor, then wrote me a handful of prescriptions -- albuterol, four days worth of prednisone, and advair. Advair is pretty cool because it's a maintenance inhaler you take twice a day every day - it has low levels of both long-acting dialators and a steroid, so it helps your lungs work better all the time. It's not a rescue inhaler you take while you're having an asthma attack. The doc also advised me to get some regular allergy medicine to maybe keep me from getting the seasonal drainage that probably causes me to have this stuff every year, so I got some OTC claritin too.