Tuesday started with scans and the beginning of another National Jewish friendship. :) Kevin in radiology performed my chest & sinus CTs & the chest X-ray. He was yet another staff member that embodied the standard of this place.
From radiology, I moved on to a nutrition consult followed by an esophogram/barium swallow test. The next appointment was with Dr. Katial, an asthma/immunology specialist. He was a very knowledgeable and kind man. He discussed the severity of my asthma and how treatment was complicated because of my lack of triggers. I have no allergies, but I do fall in the less common catagory of aspirin sensitivity. He added an ENT consult to my schedule and had a few other ideas he wanted to discuss with Dr. Olson. I was very impressed with how willing he was to work with my other doctor to figure things out.
After a quick lunch in the cafeteria, we headed up to meet Dr. Spahn for pharmacokinetics. Wow is all I can say. He used football analogies to explain how the body metabolizes steroids and much more. It was a fascinating lesson from which I've included the diagrams for the sake of the memory more than comprehension! :) He described problems caused from long term steroid use and explained many of the irreversible side effects. All in all, we had to swallow a lot of tough news in this session. I'd been fighting Dr. Greisner on the steroids for years because I knew they were bad. The list included bone deterioration, skin thinning, immune deficiency, cataracts, glaucoma, weight gain, bruising, insomnia, muscle /joint pain, muscle weakness, and elevated heart rate. The good news was that Dr. Spahn & Dr. Olson were running a pharmacokinetics test so that a plan to stop the steroids could be developed!
