Doctors are human, too.

I have a new appreciation for the fragility of the human condition, especially the fragility of my human condition.

All my life, I've considered myself healthy.  I never needed to go to the hospital.  My first-generation Korean parents' philosophy on illness was, "Suck it up, you'll get better before you're married."  Doctors visits were limited to the shots and physicals.  In my early 20s, like most young healthy adults, I believed myself untouchable by illness.  I was thankfully blessed with good health and hardly ever got sick, never been hospitalized, no allergies.

Then came medical school rotations, and I got sick.  Just with minor colds.  Then, I started to develop a dry, hacking cough for a month after each illness.  Then came residency, and I would without fail have a dry, hacking cough through most of winter each year.  Of course, I was the brunt of many nerdy medical jokes from smoker's cough to tuberculosis to pertussis.  

Doctors make the worst patients.  I am the poster-child for delinquent, hypocritical doctor-patient.  I haven't seen a doctor since coming to residency.  Not for trying.  Second year, I looked up healthcare providers and started the process.  Then our health insurance policy changed, and I became busy (read: lazy), and then I decided to wait it out until I had a "real job."

Then, with only a few months left of residency, I got another cold.  Damn kids.  Again, dry hacking cough.  At this point, i knew this cough is a variant of asthma.  But I was working nights:  5 days of 14 hour shifts.  No time to go to the doctor.  I was self-treating with albuterol inhalers around the clock, which would stave off the symptoms for a while.  After 1 week and at the insistence of my colleagues who watched me double over from cough and shortness of breath each night, I got a course of oral steroids--the definitive treatment for asthma.  After starting the steroids, I thought I was somewhat better.  

Then the weather changed freakishly and became a sweltering 90 degrees with pollen counts at all time highs.  After a night shift on the last day of the oral steroids, I woke up out of my sleep in respiratory distress.  I was coughing and breathing so quickly that I couldn't speak an entire sentence.  It was the middle of the day.  Everyone I knew was working.  I took albuterol, got into my car, and drove to the ER.  

I was legit scared.  OMG asthma can really kill people scared.  So scared, my blood pressure was astronomically high, 179/111.  The silly triage dude was afraid I was in CHF, sent me directly to Xray, and they got me a room and an EKG.   The nurses were afraid to give me albuterol since my BP was so high.  So now, I can't breathe, I'm scared that I have asthma AND high BP.  

At any rate, I ended up being treated in the ED, and admitted to the hospital for IV steroids.  I was duly lectured by everyone I know for not taking care of myself.  Not doing the things I should have been doing all along: going to see the doctor regularly, taking allergy medicine regularly.  

Alright, God, I got it.  I'll take care of myself.

Hi, my name is Clara.  I am an asthmatic.  I suck as a patient.   I have a new jealous appreciation for the phrase "previously healthy."