Day Nine

Today has probably been the most 'productive' day of my admission so far. 

It started off with being woke up by Dr Mansur and the respiratory nurse specialist. He asked my opinion on the bronch, I told him I was concerned about it but would be guided by his opinion. He said that whilst he thought a bronch would be helpful, this probably wasn't the best time to do it taking into account I was poorly on Sunday, my high FeNO levels, and if anything happened it could skew the results of the trial. So, no bronch today :) 
Then we discussed the high FeNO levels. I told him I don't think I have hayfever but am happy to go along with the nasal spray (which I am, for now, and when it doesn't make a difference I can stop it). He has also stopped my Ciclesonide inhaler, reduced my Symbicort inhaler, and started me on nebulised steroids. They'll continue to monitor my FeNO levels to see whether these changes help.
Dr Mansur then went onto say that he thinks the root of my problems may be the inflammation in my airways. Even though my FeNO levels are high and climbing, I feel okay. Dr Mansur thinks this could be the reason why I get so poorly; I'm so used to having such inflamed airways that I only start to notice and feel poorly when my airways are incredibly irritated and inflamed, then when it gets to that point, it doesn't take much to spark off a huge attack where the inflammation gets so bad that I literally can't breathe.
If his suspicions are right, and the inflammation is the cause of all my problems, this Terbutaline trial is unlikely to help me much as it won't address the underlying inflammation.......

In other news, today marks the half way point in the trial. 6 days of placebo/Terbutaline then 6 days of the other. I'm pretty sure I've just had 6 days of placebo, so if I'm right, the Terbutaline part of the trial has now started. I fell asleep this afternoon (it's very tiring doing nothing!), and woke up with a definite tremor in my hands and a headache. I didn't get any side effects when we did the trial the first time round so I wasn't expecting to have anything this time until the dose is increased on Thursday. But I was on a downward slope to being very poorly last time, and not just sitting in a hospital bed, so maybe I just didn't notice any side effects. Anyway, there hasn't been any effect on my peak flows yet so we'll just see what happens.