I can breathe again

Well, I went home and booked an appointment with my doctor. While sitting at home waiting the three hours till then, my dad texted me to ask if I'd heard the news about an asthma warning. Something of a coincidence that I couldn't breathe, so I called him and had a quick chat. He'd read this article about asthma in the paper which says that pollen and smog and thunderstorms and stuff have been triggering a lot of asthma. It was good to know what was causing it at least.

So I went along to the doctor and had a chat and she said she'd give me some pills and new inhalers (my old inhaler expired in 2003 - no wonder it was doing no good) and then offered to nebulize me, which was pretty cool. A nebulizer is a machine that creates a nebula (hence the name) or fine vapour of liquid medication so that you can inahle it directly. Basically, you sit there with an oxygen mask on and this machine puts a mist of salbutamol into the air you breathe which relaxes your lungs. It's a very relaxing experience, especially after spending a whole day struggling to breathe.

So, anyway, I've now got to take a weeks course of steroid pills to prevent my body having another reaction to all the pollen and smog and stuff. I have to take 8 pills a day, all at once. Weird, huh? They're these little tiny scarlet pills, about the size of the hole in a Polo mint. Quite why I couldn't just take two regular sized pills is beyond my medical knowledge, but there you go. Either way, the pills work and I can breathe again, which is the main thing.

So I'm not dead.

I'm going to tell you all about Batman Begins this afternoon.