just adding to my previous post, yesterday I started using an asthma inhaler, (called Symbicort, active ingredients budesonide and fumaterol fumarate dihydrate ) prescribed for a long term cough, hopefully to be cleared up after two weeks of the inhaler.
Could this have any bearing on the reappearance of the PMR pain?
Hi, just to say Ive been on Symbicort long term for my asthma and I find flare ups Are more related to stress and over-activity . Good luck.
Wouldn’t have thought so, you are getting more Pred in system, rather than less - all be it a slightly different form.
Yes, thanks Dorset Lady, of course that makes sense.
Presumably, you did the Corvid test?
Actually no, Sheffield Jane, but I have had this cough since March, so if it was Covid I think I would be dead by now! Also there is so little of the virus in New Zealand , it is unlikely. None in the South Island where I live at this point.
Shouldn't - the oral steroid should be dealing with anything in that line that will respond to pred. The effect will be increased if anything unless you are reacting to something else in the inhaler.
I do hope that long term cough has been properly investigated to be sure it is something asthmatic. I get very twitchy at the way many GPs assume "asthma" - a GP nearly killed my husband assuming his reduced peak flow after 3 failures with antibiotics MUST be asthma. All he needed to have done was send him for an open-access chest x-ray early on, required in asthma too, and he'd have made the following year a lot easier. There are other causes of long term cough besides Covid.
Thanks for your reply PMRpro. The doctor says to try the inhaler for a fortnight and if the cough, which I've had since March, hasn't gone, to come back and then they'll look into it further. I just want it to go away.
Have you had a chest x-ray at least?
Sorry to sound so dramatic but that other 2 weeks with the inhaler OH was given would have been the difference between life and death - luckily 3 days later something else happened that meant we leap-frogged the lazy GP and went straight to his hospital consultant colleagues. Who by a miracle pulled the irons out of the fire.
Hmm, well, no. The Dr said they will do an Xray if it isnt better in a fortnight. It isnt that bad as coughs go, that's why I've let it go on so long, but now we are a bit worried about an outbreak of Covid in Auckland, I am aware a cough isn't very socially acceptable, even though we are many miles away from there.
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