Freedom Feens, anarcho-capitalist libertarian voluntaryist general interest syndicated radio show. This is the show that would exist if the government were already out of the way.
Ten-minute audio is me calling in to Free Talk Live. (I misspoke in that call, I smoked from age 18 to 48, not 18 to 38. I smoked for thirty years, not twenty years.)
FYI, I am not calling for regulation. I think vaping should be completely legal and unregulated. I just want to tell you my experience with it.
Episode with me talking about my health.
Here’s a text file I wrote out and showed my new doctor, has more info:
Michael W. Dean, detailed health / asthma / treatment info.
Sept 2015.
I’m 51 years old. Had mild asthma as a kid.
Smoked cigarettes for 30 years, averaged 2 packs a day. Quit smoking 3.5 years ago and took up vaping nicotine (“eCigs”.) Quit vaping March 20, 2015, first day of Spring.
I’m a recovering drug addict, 21 years clean and sober. Negative for all Hep, HIV, etc.
I was pretty healthy until about January 2015, suddenly had horrible asthma every day. Seemingly overnight I became what I’ve heard described as a “Hard-Luck Asthmatic”, i.e. one with nasty ongoing daily symptoms that don’t respond to normal treatment, even when I do everything my doctor tells me to do. I felt like I was drowning a lot of the time.
I started going to pulmonologist (my old doctor). She prescribed Advair, it didn’t work and she stopped it after a month.
I had allergy scratch tests with her. Also she sent me for two pulmonary function tests, a month apart (in this building). She determined I had Status Asthmaticus, i.e. acute / chronic severe asthma, plus some lung scarring from smoking. (For starters, I would love a second opinion on that. I’m not even positive that’s it, or that that’s all. I think there’s may be something wrong with me other than asthma that my old doctor missed.)
She said that the crackle sound in my lungs is the worst she’s heard in 30 years. It’s not as bad now as it was back then, but it’s still pretty bad.
For the first two months not vaping, it got worse. I was spitting up thick plugs of lung butter mucus all day every day, getting the propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin out of my lungs. Eventually she prescribed a flutter device, which helps. My primary care physician prescribed home oxygen, which I needed to be on 24/7 for a couple months, and still use several times a week when my O2 goes below 90%.
Was spitting up phlegm from my lungs constantly, is less now, but still so. It feels like I have straw or fiberglass in my lungs. I don’t, but that’s how it feels. My coughing is often barely productive: it can take a lot of (painful) coughing to have a single sputum come out, and there’s always more.
I often feel that my throat is about to close up. It feels like this even when my asthma is “managed” as well as it can be.
I can’t leave the house most days without something triggering an attack, from someone’s perfume, or pollen, or the smell of chemicals at the gardening center, etc. I essentially now only leave the house to go to doctor appointments.
We even went beyond the doctor’s recommendation and had the plants in our backyard bulldozed and replaced with gravel to cut down on pollen. Also had the house tested professionally for mold and radon. Mold was a negative. Basement had slightly above acceptable amount of radon, we paid for professional mitigation system installation, it’s brought the radon down to “acceptable” levels.
(My old doctor) prescribed a whole litany of things which, even all combined, are not keeping my asthma under control. I’m still having attacks almost every day, sometimes several times a day.
I’m currently still daily taking these medications:
- Nebulized Budesonide and Brovana (I think this helps) 2 X daily.
- Nebulized rescue Albuterol when needed (this helps some, for sure, but not as much as it should.)
- Albuterol rescue inhaler if out of the house (barely helps)
- Singulair pill (Don’t know if it helps)
- Claritin (Don’t know if it helps)
- Spiriva (Don’t know if it helps, my lungs also don’t like the feel of the powder, it’s an irritant, same issue I had with Advair)
- Nose sprays: Nasacort, Nasacrom, Azelastine (Don’t know if they help)
- Prednisone (helps a lot, but not good for me)
- Nose wash 2 x daily with NeilMed (this helps, but may have given me a sinus infection? And/or maybe Prednisone lowered immunity and contributed to sinus infection?
- Have EpiPen on me at all times, haven’t used it yet.
- Probiotic pills (live)
- Multivitamins
Just started this past week on:
- Theophylline pills.
With all these meds and/or because of my asthma, my heart rate is very often over 100 BPM. But sometimes when I’m having an attack and coughing hard, it measures very low on my meter, like 25 or 40 BPM, then catches up to 100 after a half-minute or so.
I wonder if it’s possible that some medicine I’m taking or some combination of medicines I’m taking are contributing to my asthma at this point. I don’t know because I’ve not been off any of them since I got on them. The doctor just kept piling on more and more medications as no one medication really worked well.
I also did EVERYTHING the doctor recommended: I stopped vaping, gave away my cats (!), stopped eating any foods I’m even mildly allergic to, got a home HEPA filter air purifier unit and a HEPA filter vacuum, removed all rugs from our house, replaced cloth couches with new leather couches, covered mattress and pillows with allergy barrier bags, washed everything, and steam clean floors in house frequently, stopped using chemical cleaning agents, my wife stopped using perfume, my wife no longer vapes in the house, we switched to unscented soaps, shampoos, fabric soap, discontinued fabric softener. We read ingredients on everything, not just food but toothpaste, lip gloss, vitamins, etc. (I’m allergic to many foods, including soy, and there’s soy in many products.)
In August 2015 I was hospitalized at Wyoming Medical Center for two nights for vasovagal fainting from coughing (passed out, fell, broke my nose). They did blood tests and an ultrasound on my heart to determine it was not a cardiac event.
I’m worried every time I cough now (many many times a day) that I’m going to faint. The one time I did, I was lucky enough that my wife was home to take me to the hospital. I’m worried about what would happen if I fainted and hit my head while she wasn’t here. I won’t take a shower now when she’s not here for fear of passing out and drowning. It’s a real possibility.
The hospital also did a CT scan and found an infection in my sinuses. Prescribed antibiotics (Cefuroxime). I took all as directed until they were gone.
The previous month I’d asked (my old doctor) for a CT scan and she said I didn’t need one. I’d also asked her more than once “Do I have an infection?” and she said no. She has also never even suggested an asthma action plan.
The week after I got out of the hospital, I cracked or severely damaged a rib coughing, according to Dr. Grady Snyder. He prescribed a short course of codeine with Tylenol. He said there was no need to x-ray because there’s nothing you can do for a cracked rib other than not stress it more. The codeine is gone and I’m still in pain, I have to hold my side every time I cough to try to minimize the pain.
Since January I haven’t been able to comfortably sleep in a bed. I have to sleep sitting up in a recliner chair, at a slight angle. If I sleep lying down, after an hour or two my lungs fill with fluid and I wake up coughing uncontrollably with an asthma attack.
I need to do a sleep study, (my old doctor) scheduled one, I probably have sleep apnea, I postponed the one she had because it was for tonight, and your office recommend I postpone it until I talk to you.
Also having rough, scratchy sound to my voice, from coughing a lot and from meds. Talking a lot is a trigger too, brings on asthma. I need to deal with both things, since part of my job is doing a syndicated radio show 7 days a week. (I’ve been having my co-hosts do it without me most days since January.) I’ve also been unable to call advertisers and stations, which is how I actually monetize the show, so my income has gone to nearly nothing.
A nurse recommended breathing exercises, but they make me cough and can lead to an attack. Walking 30 feet makes it hard to breathe for a few minutes. I can no longer do any housework, I used to do most of it, and now my wife is taking up the slack. It’s burning her out.
I’d like to keep my primary care physician (Dr. Snyder at Community Health Center of Central Wyoming) but am looking for a new pulmonologist. (My old doctor) isn’t really cutting it. In addition, she’s currently out of town indefinitely on family leave.
Last week when I went to see Dr. Snyder he also prescribed Theophylline. I’m hopeful about it. Theophylline was also recommended by Dr. ________, the excellent hospitalist at Wyoming Medical Center.
I’m on Prednisone, 30 mg day, have been for 3 months. It helps, but I know I need to get off of it. But I need to get the asthma under control first. The last two times I tried to taper off Prednisone, when I got down to 5 Mg a day, my peak flow goes below 200 and I ended up in the hospital, once for a severe asthma attack, once with a broken nose from passing out coughing. I probably should also taper off more slowly than I have before, once the asthma is under control. A 300 Peak flow is a good day for me. 400 is rare and extraordinary.
The only time I’ve felt my asthma “under control” or even close to it since January was when I got out of the hospital the first time (after IV and nebulizer treatment in ER) and was on 50 mg Prednisone for a few days. I actually felt normal and felt relief, had a peak flow of 500, and it was the only time I’ve had several days of easy breathing and no attacks since January.
Looking back I can see that while it seems this illness came on suddenly in January 2015, there were inklings of it here and there as much as a year or two before. I also ran out of Primatene Mist in January, I’d stockpiled it after it went off sale, and that was my only asthma treatment most of my adult life. I used it on average twice a week. I think it was masking the effects of smoking and vaping on my asthma, and once I stopped Primatene, the underlining growing illness came to the forefront.
My quality of life is poor because of asthma. I’m hopeful something can change, my life has gone from great to horrible with this illness. And it’s draining us financially and I can no longer work, so that’s even more of a financial drain.
I really need to get healthy. This illness has completely sidelined my life, and made my wife and I captive to my health issues.
Please help!
Michael W. Dean
Turn your cash into liberty!
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