One week my wife had severe asthma and it would not go away.
In fact,we had visited our doctor numerous times for adrenalin shots.
Thesehelped in the short term (for a day or so) but the asthma justreturned again later.
Both of us wanted to resolve this condition ona more permanent basis, as it was becoming very difficult to dealwith.
We talked to our doctor, a wonderful man named Dr.
Frischer, and hedirected us to a specialist.
Someone who was familiar with thedisease and could help us come up with a permanent handling.
I must admit that my wife did not want to go to this specialist.
Shedidn't say why, she just was not comfortable with him.
However, Iconvinced her, and before long we had pulled up to the doctorsoffice, which was in a little hospital in Paramount, California.
The specialist took one look at Claudia and knew that her asthma wasterrible.
He had Claudia breath into a tube, then tisked to himselfwhen he saw the result.
It appeared that Claudia was not gettinganywhere near the amount of oxygen that a normal person received.
Infact, her lungs were drawing in about a forth of the normal amount ofair - it was pretty bad that day.
Which meant, of course, it was theperfect day to see the specialist.
The guy did some more tests, then recommended an allergy panel todetermine exactly which substance was causing Claudia's condition.
Heexplained that asthma is usually triggered by something, someparticle in the air.
It could be dust, pollen, cockroach droppings,cat dandruff or any other small particle.
We agreed and the panel was done.
The doctor swabbed her arm withabout twenty different substances, explaining that they would swellup into little bumps if anything registered.
One substance registeredstrongly - simple dust.
It seemed that Claudia's asthma was caused bydust.
While we were there, the specialist increased her Prednisone dosageto 60 milligrams.
This is an incredibly high dosage of this drug, butbased upon Claudia's poor breathing, the doctor felt it wasnecessary.
If you remember from the previous article (part 1),prednisone has the side effect of making Claudia extremely hostile toour poor cat Baby.
Well, during the next few weeks that cat had to beguarded night and day by Al and myself to keep Claudia from killingit.
The result of this trip? We finally realized the link between theenvironment and Claudia's asthma.
We decided to be a little moreproactive, and purchased some air filters for the living room andbedroom.
These helped control the asthma to a certain extent.
The other result? Now Claudia was feeling the other major short termside effect of Prednisone - it's very difficult to stop taking..