Bloody illnesses

22 Notes

Last Tuesday I went to the doctor’s with a dry, hacking cough I’d had for a couple of weeks and get every so often. They started to chase a diagnosis of asthma. I did peak flow readings, but they were all super high, suggesting no asthma; plus Ventolin didn’t help at all. Over the weekend, I started getting breathless with a 100+ bpm heart when doing anything physical at all - even walking up stairs. I’m also fatigued and achey all the time and I still have the cough.

At a doctor’s appointment today, she was a hair’s breadth away from sending me to hospital for observation for the breathlessness and high heart rate I am suffering from, following an ECG (which was clear) and Pulseox test she didn’t like the look of. As it was, I got a strong dose of antibiotics in case it’s a bacterial infection, and I have to go back for more tests tomorrow. Next most likely diagnosis is a viral infection; then obscure-ish variants of pneumonia etc, and some way out on the probability curve after that is a blood clot on the lung. I’m statistically at a very low risk of that, but I’m a bit alert to the possibility because of recent events.

So, umm, yeah.