all of this brings me back to the use of two different anti-histamines a-day. one for the lungs in the morning, the other for food irritants at night. i am also adding in a strong drag of steroids to start my day. smokers wake up and take a puff to start their day with the smoke they crave. i am puffing on a plastic tube filled with corticosteroids to manage my immune response, calming the bronchial irritation that flares because of simple dust. all of these meds do nothing more than allow me to catch a full breath, letting me walk around the office without needing to grab onto furniture to stop from falling over from the lack of oxygen. without the meds my lungs close and i struggle with limited lung capacity.
i almost hate this quality of life medical condition i have come to accept. auto-immune disease is in the family, a sister has lupis and a niece has alopecia universalis. so, on the scale of overactive immune responses, i think i have gotten off lucky. i have a system that reacts to dust and smoke, and considers consumption of carbohydrates as an invasion by foreign troops. it is not a surprise that a few beers in a bar with co-workers, one who was smoking, on a friday night tied in tightly with the latest burst of immune response. being run-down from the flu, sleeping in air-con and eating other carbs all at the same time appeared to be just too much, but the beers were the right choice at the wrong time.
so i have come to accept that i have to rely on self control, avoiding the things that i enjoy and crave and a healthy dose of meds to help lower the body’s response to simple things that most tolerate with ease. i don’t mind the inhaler, it’s simple to get up in the morning, open a cap and take a deep cleaning breath. i don’t mind the meds, although the ones that work for me are only sold in the US and i need to have them imported by traveling family and staff; smuggling over-the-counter drugs that allow me to breathe. these things are simple and invisible; no one notices what i am doing. it’s a quiet and personal battle.
it is visible, the steroids cause weight gain, but they also allow me to exercise, so if i can balance the breath-in and sweat-out, than even this can be hidden. laziness of not taking the meds or not exercising the weight off is the risk i am now facing. but it is not the most visible of the humiliations i am now faced with. my doctor has prescribed a new weapon in my arsenal of protection. she suggested i go to the pharmacy and ask for a filter to keep the dust of the hazy KL weather from entering my lungs and causing me to become irritated in the first place.
i am now walking around town with a micro-pore filter mask, a respiratory valved face mask; it is white with a large 3M printed on the front. as i walked from the pharmacy to the car i received a new type of smile. the people of KL are now presented with a large, white, bald man in brightly colored shirts who appears to be over-reacting to h1n1, the halal name for swine flu, which was declared by the local newspapers this morning as a pandemic. how little they know that i am not worried about flu at all, i simply can’t breathe the hazy air in this city.
i am sure i look dumb, i am sure they have no idea why i am really wearing the mask, and i am sure i don’t care. taking a deep breath is much more important to me than how silly i look walking around town. following the lesson i learned from my 10th grade science teacher, while sitting in a lifeguard tower years later, “form follows function”. the odd haircut and the bright colors are choice, but breathing is a non-optional requirement. if the people think i am over-reacting, they at least have it half right. i have been told i need filters for years, i finally have one.
i am now a masked man; let the breathing return.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment