July 14th 2020 archive

This doesn’t surprise me, but it saddens me.

As a direct result of this pandemic, my pulmonologist does not want me to take prednisone unless I really need it and there is no other alternative. This is because prednisone is a fairly potent immunosuppressant and we are seeing an uptick in the number of COVID-19 cases in this state (once again) because of our governor’s incompetence, and if I am on prednisone — or have been on prednisone really recently — and am actually exposed to it, this may incapacitate my ability to fight it off. This would obviously be bad for me for a number of reasons, the least of them being that I am definitely not a mild asthmatic. And I mean, I can see where my lung doctor is coming from making that recommendation. But it just sucks that he has to make it…

We could have ridden this out longer under a longer stay-at-home order, opened the economy up over a longer period of time, but no. The governor pandered to people literally whining over “the economy” and “going back to work”, and as a direct consequence of this, we have to pay the price of closing everything back up again because the largest hospital in the state and the country could not handle the ICU caseload.

I can’t help but know for a fact that if we had any other president this would have been handled better.

Although prednisone is not the wrecking ball for me that it can be for other people, it has helped in the past when I have had more severe, enduring exacerbations, so it does suck that I can not fall back on this right now, so I am hoping that Symbicort works well in the interim. And speaking of that, when I get a chance I’m thinking of replaying Final Fantasy XIII with New Game+ or maybe even Final Fantasy XIII-2 while I conveniently slow walk Lightning Returns — yes, I’ll get around to finishing it, someday. Really, I will here.