Asthma rules!

Apparently I was so devastated with the season finale of Grey's Anatomy that I just HAD to see the inside of an ER. I mean, what's Thursday night without a little hospital drama? So, I had a sudden asthma attack late last night and got rushed to the hospital. Awesome!

The great thing about having an asthma attack and going to the ER is that there is no wait. Triage usually sees to it that I have a tube in my throat and plenty of steroids in my system immediately. Plus, even though I'm freaking out on the inside and seconds away from bursting into tears from fear that I don't know where my next breath will come from, Long Island Jewish hospital still finds a way to make me chuckle.

I walk into the hospital, hospital people see me with shoulders hunched, red face, and heaving for air, so I'm ushered to triage. PEDIATRICS triage. I hand the nurse my insurance card, so I don't have to do much talking (like spelling my 11-letter last name) and she says, "Wait a minute. Your date of birth is 1980? You need to go next door to the adult triage."

Holy shit, people. Enough of this. I am not, nor do I look like, I am 16 freaking years old. My mom is worried sick, but she still manages to laugh out loud with the mistake. Even the security guard comes up to her and asks, "how old is your daughter? Really?"

A few rounds of tube breathing goodness, lots of steroids, and a couple of hours staring wildly around the ER for some Seattle Grace Hospital action, I'm back up to 74% of lung capacity. The asthma specialist reports his numbers to the resident and he says,

"74%? You mean before we started the round of treatments?"

Specialist: "No, 74% after three rounds of treatment. We can run another test in few minutes, but she's at 74% now."

Resident: (look of consternation) "There's a lot of room for improvement here, so let's give it a few minutes and run the test again."

That's when I tell them that my lungs usually operate at this underachiever level. 74% is actually quite good. Sigh.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was boasting about my latest test results from my regular asthma doctor: (Large airway capacity improved from 65% to 70% to 75% in the last year; small airway capacity improved from 72% to 80% to a whopping 95%). You could have told me that I passed the MCATs, that's how I happy I was.

I agree to a follow up today with my doctor, increase the dosages on all my asthma meds, and take some lovely fat-inducing prednisone for a few days, and the attending discharges me.

Oh, how the mighty gym rat has fallen.