Altered Nervous System, Part 2

Courtesy of "The Daily Mutts"

Oh, how I wish I could be sitting on my meditation cushion like Mooch here.  Doesn't he look so peaceful?  Unfortunately my internal (and external) state is anything but.  Actually, it feels more like a nuclear meltdown.

In my last post I related how my terrible asthmatic episode had been slowly clearing...thanks to the help of a little pill called methylprednisolone.  I had let the asthma go on too long, trying to avoid taking this medicine because of how it affects the nervous system and compromises the immune system.  But I had to do it, it had gotten really bad...and it nearly had it cleared.

Then a week ago Tuesday I started to run a temp in the early evening...and the asthma just exploded.  Beyond that I was scheduled for three appointments down at SK on Wednesday.  Talk about bad timing.  I completely freaked out my SK docs, who thought I had pneumonia.  Eric drove me down to my Pulmonary Specialist who is my main man (he's been my doc for well over ten years) who is much closer and easier to get to than NYC...I shivered the whole way down in the car, and when I finally had my chest x-ray, thankfully, sooooo thankfully, I did not have pnuemonia.

I likely had a touch of a flu virus that has been going around, which aggravated the nearly cleared asthma.  I'm still on the long-term antibiotics (more on that later), so a virus as opposed to something bacterial made sense.  Thankfully I have a very calm, sensible primary doctor who tested my white blood cell count, didn't find it to be too elevated, and held off on adding an additional antibiotic.  Amazingly my temp came down in the car on the way home...and didn't come back (may have been the dose of Oscillo I took, that stuff is amazing).  The bad news was that a course of methylprednisolone would not be strong enough to clear what was going on in my lungs....so I am on a course of the big guns...prednisone.

Prednisone takes your nervous system and basically obliterates it.  I do not get to sleep until I've been up for like 20 hours, and then collapse from exhaustion.  It causes this internal conflict in that your body is speeding along like a rocket, but you feel so tired at the same time.  Not comfortable at all.

It also pounces on your immune system.  I had an event to attend last Sunday...my beautiful yoga sister Mary was hosting a workshop at her yoga studio, her first big one.  And she wasn't hosting just anybody, she was hosting our amazing teacher, Kamini Desai.  I was supposed to be out front checking people in.  Like I said, really bad timing.

Our bright and shining Kamini, kaminidesai.com

I called my doc on Friday and said I was breathing better, and how did he feel about me going to an event with over 30 people on Sunday?  I didn't expect to be able to go, but I thought, couldn't hurt to ask.  To my surprise, he told me I could go, as long as I didn't hug or touch anyone (that was so hard, I haven't seen many of my yoga sisters in sooooo long), and made sure to wash hands often, sanitize, stay in my own space, etc.  So that is what I did, I wore rubber gloves while checking everyone in, and it was a wonderful workshop experience.  The last time I saw Kamini I had just finished a week with her and Gurudev at Omega, the week last summer that I had found out I had breast cancer.  Now here I was with her again, healing and recovering, and cancer-free!  It felt wonderful, and like I had come nearly full circle.

Because I had only been on the prednisone for a few days I hadn't started really speeding yet, which I am so grateful for.  Now I'm saturated with it, so I feel like a rocket ship being held still as it tries to shoot through space.  I have a few days of it left to go, the dose tapers down but it stays in your system for awhile.  It makes my hands shake, so no mala making yet, and I am frustrated about that (I have so many malas planned and all those gorgeous beads from the bead show!).  If I need to use a knife I ask for help.  I want to make a green juice right now, but I have to wait for help with chopping cucumbers, celery and pears.  No unnecessary trips to the hospital for me, thank you very much.

But my lungs are nearly cleared and so, I am so grateful for this medicine, even if it makes me feel like a volcanic explosion inside.

I have most of my SK appointments rescheduled, and a very important one is this Tuesday.  I will be going to see the Infectious Disease Specialist, who will be deciding if six months of antibiotics is enough to make sure that the infection that was in my sternum never comes back.  I hope and pray that it is.  I can't keep weight on and I can just feel it destroying my gut.  Probiotics can only do so much.  I want to get strong again, start moving, and mainly, be on my yoga mat.  That is what I need the most in this world right now.  Hopefully my lungs and the Infectious Disease doc cooperate.