*waves* Hello!

Hello lovely people,

just popped in to say Hi and catch up on how folk are doing.

I've had a crap six months (had a keeling-over that resulted in a broken rib and then a prolapsed disc in my neck - 3 weeks in hosp, and weeks and weeks of agony, awful) but I'm now doing really well.

My asthma is the best it has been in about six years and if it stayed like this for the rest of my life I'd be happy. I'm still T2 Brittle, but those fast-onset nasty attacks are well spaced out and I recover from them well with just lots of salbutamol. Day to day I have fewer symptoms than I have had since I was about 15 - though I'm very careful about what I do and what I eat.

As many of you know, I was dx'd with Adrenal Insufficiency a bit over a year ago, and that's still bobbing along. I seem to go into crisis pretty easily, but I'm getting better and better at recognising the early signs and getting the emergency steroids in and seeing it off. That said... I was lucky back in January when somehow my body woke me when I was having a crisis with a bad hypo (blood sugar less than 2) and ketosis as well. Not nice.

Something that has made a huge difference to my lung health has been going on insulin. We'd known since last summer that my blood sugar was very unstable and I couldn't handle carbs at all. Various consultants had various opinions about what was causing it - was I slow onset T1, or CF or something weird like MODY? I tried some tablets aimed at increasing my own insulin production, but they stopped working and because I wasn't on any specific ""pathway"" I wound up kind of in limbo... but eventually I got into a nurse led service where they were less bothered about working out exactly what flavour of diabetes I have and more interested in just finding the right treatment - which turned out to be small doses of insulin with my food.

With the insulin I've managed to put some weight on - I briefly got my BMI up to the magic 18.5 a few weeks ago... then I got norovirus... boo, but it'll come back up, I'm sure. *eats ice-lolly* (Ah - yes, I can now eat cold things without my lungs objecting!)

There are lots of other health things that I could be doing something about... osteoporosis and high cholesterol and maybe my pancreas doesn't make enough digestive enzymes and various other things, but I've been on so much medication over the last couple of years, with so many side effects, that for now I'm trying to just strip it down to the absolute minimum.

So I'm only taking insulin & hydrocortisone (which don't really count as they are just replacing what my body can't make), plus Seretide, Hydroxyzine and Montelukast. I've been on and off Tiotropium since April - I'd like to stay off of it as I've noticed the effect on my gums and teeth, but it might be pushing it too far as I've had a few more attacks when not on it.

I'm getting some support from liaison psychiatry at the hospital I attend as well - having been told previously that there wasn't ""that sort of thing"", they were really good when I was in hospital in March and pretty desperately fed up about it.

I haven't been able to go back to exercising since getting ill in the autumn but I'm looking forward to that next step, hopefully next week. Probably one of the best effects of going on insulin is that I no longer shake! Well - only a tiny bit

I'm still under my nice resp consultant - he was very pleased with me at my last appointment and I'm now on annual review. My lovely GP comes back from maternity leave in a couple of weeks too - though the rest of the practice have been good to me while she was gone.

So - how are *you* all?

Cx