Feel like I failed because I'm on pred. AGAIN

Hi everyone,

I just joined today. It seems like you have a really nice forum going here with lots of support. I'm from the US, but have been looking for a place that I can talk about my asthma where people will understand, and this is the best forum I've seen. So glad to be here.

Here's my story briefly: my parents don't believe in illness and doctors (Christian Science which is an American based religion from the 1900s kinda related to Chrisianity). Because of this I didn't go to doctors hardly at all until I was 19. I've had trouble breathing my whole life. When I was 23 I was diagnosed with moderate persistant asthma, and typically would end up on a week to a month of pred. 3-4 times a year. Then when I was 25 I was diagnosed with one of my heart defects, and when I was 26 I found out I have another heart defect (vascular ring) that creates symptoms similar to asthma. Now I have everything repaired that needs to be (ASD closed and a pacemaker). Also the ring isn't supposed to be causing my asthma problems but my current specialist stages my asthma as mild persistent (which seems odd to me as I have the same amount of symptoms). It turns out that some of my issues are probably related to arrhythmias and side effects of asthma drugs making them worse- which I've been trying to work with recently.

So long story short, after having trouble breathing for about 6 weeks.... I went up on advair 250 when this first started (which for some reason was giving me way more heart issues than usual), so I requested to switch to flovent 220, but then was still having trouble so added taking atrovent 4x a day (to avoid levabuterol as it also makes my heart race for hours). I also take singulair and some allergy meds. Then um...the chest pain set in, and the wheezing. But I must say it was very weird this time round, because it was bad but not as bad as it usually gets. Like I was getting chest pain off and on again for several days and wheezing, but I wasn't having trouble breathing while walking etc. But I just couldn't take it anymore as of this morning. It just wasn't getting better even if it wasn't getting worse. That's when I demanded to be seen by my pulmonologist (I've had all of these rather vague conversations with his office staff through this whole thing including them getting annoyed at me calling too much), and so when I saw him today I ended up with antibiotics, 10 days of pred., and a chest x-ray.

Oh...but here's the thing....I take my meds really consistently, but always end up feeling horribly guilty because I failed again and end up on pred. because I can't breathe. I realize this is probably highly illogical, but was just wondering if anyone could relate to this?

Thanks for reading,

Bee

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I know a bit how you feel but I suspect your background is making you feel a lot worse. I've just been told to increase the prednisolone to 40mg! Ugh. Actually I tolerate it quite well provided I avoid salt and, oddly, it gives me an aversion to sweet stuff so I don't usually put on weight so I shouldn't really complain.

But I had got them down to 1mg and that took 2years!! Oh well none of us are in charge of our immune systems and if you haven't done anything stupid - OK I should have seen the doctor DAYs ago - there is no reason to beat up on yourself!

Good Luck!