For those interested, here are my latest spirometry results from last weeks SARP follow-up visit at UCSF last week. It’s kind of a bad-good-bad then good-good-bad story.
Starting with the not so good news… my initial FEV1 was only 28% (.83 liters) this time. That’s down 4 percentage points from last years visit.
The good news, is that my obstructed airways reversed by a whopping 38% after just 4 puffs of Albuterol, raising my FEV1 to 39%. This moved me out of the very severe category into just the severe category…..lol. Not great, but I’ll take it! There was no further improvement after 6 puffs.
The bad news, is that less than 4 hours later when the medications wore off, my FEV1 dropped back to the low 30’s again. So basically, when there are no steroids or bronchodilators in my system, my airways go crazy and begin to close up. Im so dependent on medications to keep my airways open, Id quickly suffocate without them and spend even more time in the hospital.
The good news…is that my airways are still highly reactive to beta adrenergic drugs, which tells me that asthma is still the main component of my lung disease. This in itself is both good and bad. Good because I probably wouldn’t fair as well if the main component of my lung disease was COPD. Bad because not only is my overall lung function super low, but my airways can spasm shut at the drop of hat.
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