A bit of background
I suppose the best place to start for something like this is the beginning! I've had asthma as long as I can remember, but it never really caused any issues for me as a child - I can only really remember having 2 or 3 courses of steroids up until about age 14 when I stopped inhalers completely, so it really was mild!
Fast forward another few years to my third year of university and things went a little downhill to say the least! I spent the best part of a term ignoring (or not being very aware) of my worsening symptoms and although I did go to the GP to get a new inhaler I obviously didn't catch it in time and ended up with my housemates rushing me to A&E while we celebrated Christmas, in the middle of our exam period. It was particularly annoying because despite what various healthcare professionals have thought it was actually the least stressed I had been throughout university up until that point!
I'm actually studying medicine at university too, which is good in some ways - I find that sometimes nurses and doctors noticeably relax when I tell them! As I guess it can be a relief to not have to try and think of ways to explain things in an urgent situation without stressing out people who don't know what's happening! But it isn't always great, procedures often turn into a teaching session and it can be easy to forget that I know what certain test results mean and that can be a little worrying at times - even though I'm not a particularly anxious person.
Over the last couple of years I think I've managed to reach 18 admissions with my asthma, a few more A&E visits where I've managed to avoid admission and more courses of steroids than I'm able to count! These have ranged from moderate exacerbations (still fairly bad in asthma!) to pretty severe and while I've managed to avoid intensive care admission and intubation (the one silver lining) they're progressively getting more severe and I have spent time on a high dependency unit - somewhere between a normal ward and ITU.
So I now have the lovely label of difficult to control severe asthma - which at least does help getting people to realise how serious it can be when I turn up to hospital. While we're not on top of it yet we're getting there slowly and the difficult asthma clinic I attend seem to be pretty determined to sort me out!
This blog will be a mix of things! Probably quite a lot will be somewhere for me to unload about my never ending journey through the healthcare system, as well as some reflections on what it is like to be both a patient and a medical student. Finally the steroids I've taken have made me nice and round (well, rounder!) so there will probably be some stuff on healthy eating and exercise motivation for those who hate physical activity as much as me!
Fast forward another few years to my third year of university and things went a little downhill to say the least! I spent the best part of a term ignoring (or not being very aware) of my worsening symptoms and although I did go to the GP to get a new inhaler I obviously didn't catch it in time and ended up with my housemates rushing me to A&E while we celebrated Christmas, in the middle of our exam period. It was particularly annoying because despite what various healthcare professionals have thought it was actually the least stressed I had been throughout university up until that point!
I'm actually studying medicine at university too, which is good in some ways - I find that sometimes nurses and doctors noticeably relax when I tell them! As I guess it can be a relief to not have to try and think of ways to explain things in an urgent situation without stressing out people who don't know what's happening! But it isn't always great, procedures often turn into a teaching session and it can be easy to forget that I know what certain test results mean and that can be a little worrying at times - even though I'm not a particularly anxious person.
Over the last couple of years I think I've managed to reach 18 admissions with my asthma, a few more A&E visits where I've managed to avoid admission and more courses of steroids than I'm able to count! These have ranged from moderate exacerbations (still fairly bad in asthma!) to pretty severe and while I've managed to avoid intensive care admission and intubation (the one silver lining) they're progressively getting more severe and I have spent time on a high dependency unit - somewhere between a normal ward and ITU.
So I now have the lovely label of difficult to control severe asthma - which at least does help getting people to realise how serious it can be when I turn up to hospital. While we're not on top of it yet we're getting there slowly and the difficult asthma clinic I attend seem to be pretty determined to sort me out!
This blog will be a mix of things! Probably quite a lot will be somewhere for me to unload about my never ending journey through the healthcare system, as well as some reflections on what it is like to be both a patient and a medical student. Finally the steroids I've taken have made me nice and round (well, rounder!) so there will probably be some stuff on healthy eating and exercise motivation for those who hate physical activity as much as me!
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