Asthma in the times of swine flu

Well!
I had a B-A-D cold one month and a half ago. All my family did, too. We all got better, but I got some allergy symptoms that didn't stop for the whole time. Then, two weeks ago, asthma symptoms, allergy induced asthma symptoms.

One week ago my doctor sent me a inhaler. I was happy,  because these asthma stuff happens to me once a year, at the onset of spring. So, I thought my problems were all gone and I was gonna get better.

The inhaler didn't help. On Monday night, it was very difficult to sleep, and I thought I was having a heart attack or something... very weird!. So, yesterday, I called the triage at Kaiser, and they were surprisingly worried. They sent me to the ER, and while I was waiting for Alfredo to get home so he could take me to the ER (it was recommended that someone took me, not to drive there alone) the nurse that took my phone call, called back to my home TWICE.  I was wishing she wouldn't because speaking really made my breathing really, really difficult, and it flared up my coughing.

So, we go to the ER, and it was JAMPACKED. Many people were wearing masks over their mouths and noses... I went to the registration, and amazingly, after swiping my card, they rushed me before other people, and I was seen by a RN right there. After that, and seeing that it was asthma but I was not about to drop dead there, they sent me to the waiting room.

And then, it hit me: I am Mexican, I am wheezing and I am coughing... in the middle of a crowded hospital waiting room, crammed with panicked people on the verge of paranoia, almost sure that the swine flu is already a global pandemic of  Stephen-King-The-Stand-apocalyptic proportions. No wonder there would be a jerk of legs whenever I coughed or used a kleenex!

If I felt like myself, I would have made a loud comment about me having ASTHMA and not any kind of animal flu... but I couldn't care less about anything else but getting air inside! Sheeessshhh, it's hard to keep a conscious breathing and a mentally measuring of the oxygen that goes into your lungs!

I was there for an hour or so, before being taken into a room where I took some medicines (steroids, ha!!!) and 3 albuterol treatments. At around 10:30 I was allowed to go home, but as soon as 11:30 I was again on the inhaler. I got better through the night, and woke up EXTREMELY tired, pain all over, and just feeling not myself... Actually, I am exhausted!!!, EXHAUSTED!

Maybe it is the oxygen actually feeding my blood stream for the first time in weeks, and my body is in kind of a high from it. Or maybe it is the mental tiredness of being aware of such natural human functions for such a long stretch of time. Maybe it's just something as vane as how my house was clean yesterday and today it seems armaggedon came here last night...

Or maybe, just maybe, I left the ER with a little bit more of what I asked for... and soon someone around me will be faced with the choice of going to Las Vegas or Nebraska, and David will be spelling MOON...