Yesterday's meeting was so packed with information, that I missed recording a couple things, that if not for the occasional reader, I need to record for myself.
The biggest omission was info on albuterol (sulfate). This is the substance in the most common form of inhaler, prescribed for shortness of breath, ie, wheeziness. I have had one for a couple years. Jan has one too, suggesting its further commonness. Each inhaler contains 200 doses. The fact that I still have 50 huffs left testifies to the fact that I don't use it all the time. In fact I use it very little. Such was not the case during the pneumonia where I would sometimes take a hit to open the lungs up enough for O2 in order to get to sleep. One can take a couple hits every 4-6 hrs several times per day.
Albuterol apparently is a CNS stimulant. One of its effects is to speed up heart rate. Since speeded up heart rate may be a pre-cursor to SVT, in my case it is surely contraindicated, The cardio doc suggests that the next time I need to work on shortness of breath, I get an inhaler which is steroidal. This dovetails very nicely with what the pulmonologist in PHX did. My last bout of wheezing in AZ, he gave me a cortisone shot, and some prednisone pills to be taken in a decreasing order (eg, 4,3,2,1 per day). (He added a very short course of antibiotic as well.) That did the trick for me. Not incidentally, my sister-in-law has been treated the very same way.
I have already reported that my heart rate is much more sensitive now without the attenolol doing its thing. And I am much more sensitive to caffeine. It follows that I will also be much more sensitive to albuterol.
Therefore: no albuterol for me!
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