Wednesday, March 23, 2011

No boobs, no asthma!!

It's that time of year when my asthma usually kicks in, I can barely breathe and I end up with a hacking cough that sounds like I have the croup. It lasts for months on end. I usually end up at the doctor with walking pneumonia at some point after I'm forced to go to the doctor by my husband, who can't stand any longer to listen to me cough like I'm choking to death.
Well, no more. Thanks to my bilateral mastectomy, it is no more.
No more breasts, no more asthma.
What an incredible solution. Who would have thought it so?
I swear that when I went in for my bilateral mastectomy last February (2010), I was clutching an inhaler. I'd been told by the doctors that I could not be coughing like that during surgery, so I took my last puff before they put me under.
I haven't had to use an inhaler since, knock on wood. Nor have I had to take my twice-daily inhale of my Advair inhaler. I do still take my daily Singulair and my daily Claritan and I still go for my allergy shots every other week, but I was doing all that before the surgery, too.
What on earth was this all about? I sort of made a joke of it when I went on my more-than-regular doctor visits: "Hey doc, you're not gonna believe this, but ever since they cut off my breasts, I don't have asthma anymore??" Mostly, they were shocked.
Finally, my oncologist suggested it might be that the hormone blockers I'm now taking have some steroids in them that might be compensating for the inhaler action. Aha!! Say it's so!
So, if you live in this polluted Valley of ours, I now have the solution. Breast cancer, a bilateral mastectomy, months of chemotherapy, and viola! You may rid yourself of asthma.
But no, I wouldn't recommend this remedy to anyone, not even my worst enemy (I'm not sure I even have one of those!). But I have to say, it's worked wonders for me!