Update

I feel blessed by the doctors I have working on my health and wellbeing. Today I saw my pulmonologist who did a battery of breathing tests and a chest x-ray. The breathing tests showed in improvement in every area accept one and my chest x-ray showed that the pneumonia I have had for months has cleared up. It also showed that there was scarring on the lower lobes of my lungs. He said that once I am recovered he will probably do a CT scan and assess how much damage has been done to my lungs over the past year.

Over all he was very pleased and pointed out that the gamma globulin therapy is making a difference already for me. He is also expecting good results from the new asthma medication that I begin on Wednesday at Salem Hospital. He has three other patients who are on it and he has seen significant results in all of them. He said that most of them noticed a difference after the second treatment. So it will take at least 2-3 months for me to notice a difference.

He was also pleased at how the steroid step down has been going. I am so thrilled to be stepping down over the past 6 weeks that it is hard to even frame it in worlds. Once I am off steroids so many of the medications I take, I will not have to take anymore because they are all related to the steroids. I have already seen a drop in my blood sugar and that is wonderful. He did caution me that because I have been on high does steroids for 10 months that he will have to keep a close eye on my adrenal system because for the last 10 months it has not been working at all. But I have at least 3-4 months to continue to work on the steroid step down. But so far it is going very well.

Next week I take another immune system blood test to see how effective the gamma globulin treatment has been. I am expecting that it will have come up again. But will it have come up enough? That is the question. I would love to get to the point that I am doing one treatment a week.

But all in all, it is all good news. I will keep on ... keeping on. Doing the things that they tell me I have to do to stay upright and breathing.

And upright and breathing is a great place to start .....

Just Connie

It feels good to still be on the upswing