201 Days to go

     Men are stubborn.
     When I was very young, I always had some sort of breathing problems. I went through allergy shots which were supposed to do something positive for me but all I got were really bad sneezing and coughing spells.  My doctors said I was getting better.  I thought I was not. 
     As I grew older, my allergies did not vanish.  Some seasons I watched as the Kleenex stock went through the roof as I used boxes of Kleenex.  I was probably the only one in school to carry his own box of tissues. Sneezing was beginning to become my pastime during the "Season."
     Fast forward to three years ago.  I was being hospitalized on a regular basis for breathing problems.  Several times my lack of breathing got so bad, that I had to call for a Medic unit.  I would be wheezing all the way to the hospital even with the drugs the medics gave me.  In the hospital I would get more medicines until I was breathing normally.  But with all the drugs, I felt like I had just had a dozen cups of coffee.
     I was being seen by a lung doctor who kept giving me more and more drugs because nothing seemed to work. A couple of times, when I called him to say I could not breath, he said I needed to go to the E.R because he was doing everything he could and there were not more drugs he could prescribe.
     My wife made me promise that I would fire my lung doctor and find another. I listened but I was stubborn. I kept with the lung doctor for a while longer.   During my last hospital stay, my wife started to question the doctors and what they were giving me. Doctors don't like to be questioned about what they are doing especially when they know they are right.  I was wheezing and the doctors kept filling me full of drugs.  I told them the medicines were not working, so they gave me more.  And my wife kept saying to the doctors that the medicines were not working. And my lung doctor who I had been seeing for years kept saying to me that there was nothing else he could do for me and the hospital was the best place for me.
      My wife laid down the law.  I was to fire my lung doctor and latch up with someone else.  My current lung doctor found me in the ER during one of my visits.
     He listened as I told him that my medicines were not working.  He gave me some tests.
     Then he said something that almost knocked me over.
     "Art, I don't think you have ever had asthma."
     He told me that he thought I had something called Vocal Cord dysfunction which mimics the symptoms of asthma. And he suggested that what I needed to do was rinse out my nose with a saline wash at least once a day.  Now when I begin to wheeze or cough, I do the nose thing.  By the way, I don't have a need for my emergency inhaler or the other three lung medicines I was taking. All I do is my nose and perhaps two puffs of a prescription nose spray which reduces stuff from dripping down my throat and landing on my vocal cords.
     If I had listened to my lovely wife sooner,  I would not have been hospitalized so often.