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Bunting of Ember
Nov. 26th, 2024 06:51 pmWarning: contains a lot of medical-adjacent ranting and possibly misguided behavior that I wouldn't necessarily recommend to others. I would not wish to be seen as recommending that one refuse the recommendations of highly qualified professionals. Perish the thought.
Anyway, yesterday I felt a certain amount of despair and decided I couldn't take one more day of this misery, which I was beginning to suspect was at least partially the fault of my new blood pressure medication. Losartan is an ARB. At the beginning of this wrathful saga, thirteen years ago, my doctor put me on lisinopril, an ACE inhibitor. I had a bad reaction to it that caused me ten months of misery before I figured out the cause. A certain percentage of people have a bad reaction to lisinopril that makes them cough incessantly, sneeze and experience streaming eyes and runny nose. I am in that group. I took myself off the lisinopril and immediately got better. Moving along, I was prescribed amlodipine, which caused me intractable itching plus swollen and painful joints. My doctor discounted this, but also put me on losartan, because the amlodipine wasn't having much impact on my BP anyway. Losartan is an ARB. A small, unfortunate percentage of people who react badly to ACE inhibitors have the same reaction to ARBs. I took myself off the amlodipine, because the joint pain was keeping me awake at night and impeding my mobility. The doc begrudgingly agreed I might be right, and decided instead she'd double the dose of losartan. At the lower dose, it was sort of okay. At double the dose, I suffered the same incessant misery as with the ACE drugs. At first I thought it was my recent respiratory infection, which also caused a lot of misery. As I got over that, I figured out that some other irritant was in play--the losartan. So I quit taking it yesterday.
Lo and behold, I slept five hours last night without coughing. A miracle. Today I have occasional coughing, but it's like 10% of what it was. Moreover, I feel strangely liberated, comfortable in my body as I have not felt in weeks. I've recovered a tiny amount of joie de vivre and am able to have a thought or two about Thanksgiving preparations, something that had been utterly beyond my reach all month. It's as if the drug had been oppressing my mind as well as my body. I'm supposed to revisit my doctor next week, to see how the wonderful new regimen was going. I really tried to tough it out until then, but I could not. She'll have to come up with yet another intervention, hopefully one that won't ruin my quality of life in some novel way.
In other news, today would have been my father's 101st birthday. I made a little memorial plate in his honor this morning. I was out of Hero black cherry jam, his favorite. But I found in my pantry a jar of another favorite, damson plum jam, which may well have been 101 years old too. It was in there a long time, because I couldn't get the lid off! But the Sparrowhawk has obtained a wrench-like device that attaches to stubborn lids and brings them into compliance. The jam seems good enough. Anyway, my father took some pride in eating things that seemed suspect in the eyes of others. He ate bruised fruit with gusto, explaining "That's the best part!" He also said that about pork fat and chicken necks. So I spread my toast with well-aged jam in his honor. I also put out a Northern Spy from an old school orchard, a cup of strong coffee, and the little piggy toothpick holder that Tron bought as a gift for him when she was little. Der Alte did not show up for breakfast, so I ate it on his behalf. He also didn't like things to go to waste. Happy birthday!
Anyway, yesterday I felt a certain amount of despair and decided I couldn't take one more day of this misery, which I was beginning to suspect was at least partially the fault of my new blood pressure medication. Losartan is an ARB. At the beginning of this wrathful saga, thirteen years ago, my doctor put me on lisinopril, an ACE inhibitor. I had a bad reaction to it that caused me ten months of misery before I figured out the cause. A certain percentage of people have a bad reaction to lisinopril that makes them cough incessantly, sneeze and experience streaming eyes and runny nose. I am in that group. I took myself off the lisinopril and immediately got better. Moving along, I was prescribed amlodipine, which caused me intractable itching plus swollen and painful joints. My doctor discounted this, but also put me on losartan, because the amlodipine wasn't having much impact on my BP anyway. Losartan is an ARB. A small, unfortunate percentage of people who react badly to ACE inhibitors have the same reaction to ARBs. I took myself off the amlodipine, because the joint pain was keeping me awake at night and impeding my mobility. The doc begrudgingly agreed I might be right, and decided instead she'd double the dose of losartan. At the lower dose, it was sort of okay. At double the dose, I suffered the same incessant misery as with the ACE drugs. At first I thought it was my recent respiratory infection, which also caused a lot of misery. As I got over that, I figured out that some other irritant was in play--the losartan. So I quit taking it yesterday.
Lo and behold, I slept five hours last night without coughing. A miracle. Today I have occasional coughing, but it's like 10% of what it was. Moreover, I feel strangely liberated, comfortable in my body as I have not felt in weeks. I've recovered a tiny amount of joie de vivre and am able to have a thought or two about Thanksgiving preparations, something that had been utterly beyond my reach all month. It's as if the drug had been oppressing my mind as well as my body. I'm supposed to revisit my doctor next week, to see how the wonderful new regimen was going. I really tried to tough it out until then, but I could not. She'll have to come up with yet another intervention, hopefully one that won't ruin my quality of life in some novel way.
In other news, today would have been my father's 101st birthday. I made a little memorial plate in his honor this morning. I was out of Hero black cherry jam, his favorite. But I found in my pantry a jar of another favorite, damson plum jam, which may well have been 101 years old too. It was in there a long time, because I couldn't get the lid off! But the Sparrowhawk has obtained a wrench-like device that attaches to stubborn lids and brings them into compliance. The jam seems good enough. Anyway, my father took some pride in eating things that seemed suspect in the eyes of others. He ate bruised fruit with gusto, explaining "That's the best part!" He also said that about pork fat and chicken necks. So I spread my toast with well-aged jam in his honor. I also put out a Northern Spy from an old school orchard, a cup of strong coffee, and the little piggy toothpick holder that Tron bought as a gift for him when she was little. Der Alte did not show up for breakfast, so I ate it on his behalf. He also didn't like things to go to waste. Happy birthday!
