Getting Rid of Peeves

My pulmonologist keeps telling me that Sarcoidosis is tricky. There are people whose lungs are covered in granulomas who have no symptoms at all and there are people like me who have moderate granulomas who are chronically sick and coughing non-stop. I wish I were in the other group.

This past weekend the cough decided to get worse and, just for fun, to start gurgling on my left side and then for kicks, to poke my left ribs and then step on them every once in awhile just to be sure I was paying attention. I've now named it Peeves after the trouble-making ghost in the Harry Potter books. Around Saturday afternoon when I couldn't keep a breath long enough to finish a sentence, I decided the 4 drugs weren't working. Peeves must be stopped.

But I'm stubborn, so I coughed through my daughter's birthday party on Sunday and a couple days of work before I finally called to see if the doctor had any new ideas for this. I'd hoped to just deal with it over the phone, but once I said chest pain, they made me go in.

My pulmonologist does sincerely seem to be trying to help me get better. He is also trying very hard to allay my fears. Every breast cancer patient is told the same thing, any chest or back pain has to be checked out. Throw a chronic cough on top of that and the "c" word sneaks into the survivor's head pretty quickly.

Though he did not think cancer was the problem, he did not like the sound of the cough, either. So, just to be sure of where things are, he sent me off to the hospital for bloodwork and another CT scan.

Lying on the table getting pumped full of iodine and trying desperately not to cough when the machine told me to hold my breath, I was hoping that I'd get done and they'd say all the granulomas were gone, that the cough was a bad case of bronchitis and they just need me to take an antibiotic for a few days....end of Peeves for good!

The granulomas are not gone; that's the bad news. They haven't spread in the past 6 months; that's the good news. I'm not responding to the asthma drugs; bad news. This means the asthma is likely directly caused by the Sarcoid and treating the Sarcoid has to be the next step; ok news. The next step is to try to shrink the granulomas with Prednisone, a steroid; sucky news.

So, now I'm taking the drug that I said from the outset I wanted to avoid and is against all my better judgement. But, I need to stop the cough and chest pain and I don't have anything else that I can try right now. The immuno-suppressants would take months to stop the cough, and I can't even start them while I'm coughing, so those are out. The doctor says we'll try the steroid for just a week to see if there is improvement. If not, then we stop. If there is, he'll have me take it just long enough to get the cough under control and then likely move me to the immuno-suppressants long-term.

And, while I take the steroid, I'm also supposed to take all of the asthma drugs and an antibiotic (apparently there is also a small infection) - 6 drugs now. I'm drinking a lot of Kombucha to try to keep my system slightly less toxic.

In between all of this I'm supposed to be on call for the refugees and take care of my family and the rest of my job. ok. Peeves better get out, and soon.