An hour of physio
Yesterday was ... unclear. My lung function was clearly down but not as bad as in July, my sputum was thick and sticky but not as dark or difficult to clear as a full-blown infection. In fact the general consensus is that we caught an exacerbation (i.e. infectious flare-up) early. Given the choice of giving me IVs, letting me handle it with Chinese medicine alone or the later plus oral antibiotics, they actually didn't push for IVs - even with me explaining I would take them if necessary. There seems to be a turn-around of attitude. Where before "We understand people using alternative medicines" was a platitude, now it's "Sure, that works for you, go for that."
With my weight even higher than before (I probably can stop gain weight now!), a thumbs up for my hall of residence diet and just a pang of "some exercise would help", I left with some Ciprofloxapen and the promise to return in a fortnight (or earlier if it didn't work).
While I didn't feel so hot walking up St Michael's Hill with a chestful of phlegm, I had my first Cipro at work and by lunch felt quite happy to walk to the shops and back (and later was far more active in halls than I have been for a while).
At acupuncture, again I was deemed borderline but asked if he could sort out my digestion and rebalance my body, neither of which could be tackled well by the herbs. He used a couple of new points but that's exactly what he did. At this point I was charting my own route to recovery. My theory is that I messed up my digestion with lots of coughing and the wrong herbs (it turns out that even herbs that cool the lungs go through the spleen; and by cooling the spleen I stillled my digestion; also this is another indicator that infection hadn't exploded since my spleen would have gone hot under that condition). So my digestion of food was taking longer than the effective time of the insulin, leading to hypos as I took much insulin to begin and hypers as the insulin waned and the sugar from the late digestion arrived. Fix the digestion, fix the blood sugars. Fix the blood sugars, less rise in thick sputum. Less thick sputum, less space for the infection to grow and the easier to clear with antibiotics and physio.
All very convoluted and horrible to explain.
I woke up this morning just before 8 (blood sugars perfect). Once I cleared the massive pile of gunk that had built up in my upper airways overnight I spent an hour doing physio before diving off to breakfast just in time. Since I returned I've had none of that (admitedly, I just noticed my blood sugars running at 16.9. Oops). Unfortunately my chest feels like it's bruised all down the chest plate; I *think* it's partly because it's suddenly expanding more - I certainly hope so.
Anyway, this is me hoping I have a way out of this mess.
With my weight even higher than before (I probably can stop gain weight now!), a thumbs up for my hall of residence diet and just a pang of "some exercise would help", I left with some Ciprofloxapen and the promise to return in a fortnight (or earlier if it didn't work).
While I didn't feel so hot walking up St Michael's Hill with a chestful of phlegm, I had my first Cipro at work and by lunch felt quite happy to walk to the shops and back (and later was far more active in halls than I have been for a while).
At acupuncture, again I was deemed borderline but asked if he could sort out my digestion and rebalance my body, neither of which could be tackled well by the herbs. He used a couple of new points but that's exactly what he did. At this point I was charting my own route to recovery. My theory is that I messed up my digestion with lots of coughing and the wrong herbs (it turns out that even herbs that cool the lungs go through the spleen; and by cooling the spleen I stillled my digestion; also this is another indicator that infection hadn't exploded since my spleen would have gone hot under that condition). So my digestion of food was taking longer than the effective time of the insulin, leading to hypos as I took much insulin to begin and hypers as the insulin waned and the sugar from the late digestion arrived. Fix the digestion, fix the blood sugars. Fix the blood sugars, less rise in thick sputum. Less thick sputum, less space for the infection to grow and the easier to clear with antibiotics and physio.
All very convoluted and horrible to explain.
I woke up this morning just before 8 (blood sugars perfect). Once I cleared the massive pile of gunk that had built up in my upper airways overnight I spent an hour doing physio before diving off to breakfast just in time. Since I returned I've had none of that (admitedly, I just noticed my blood sugars running at 16.9. Oops). Unfortunately my chest feels like it's bruised all down the chest plate; I *think* it's partly because it's suddenly expanding more - I certainly hope so.
Anyway, this is me hoping I have a way out of this mess.