Well the past few days my asthma and eosinophilic esophagitis have just gone crazy. I've been using my rescue inhaler 2-3x per day and hardly able to sleep at night because I can't breathe properly, which I hardly ever do. And my EOE has gone right back to square one even though I've been strict with my diet. It's like I never started a diet ... food getting stuck, trouble swallowing, throat feeling weird constantly, constant heartburn, constatn stomach pain and nausea ...
I went to my GP today and got refills for my two types of inhalers, some allergy eye drops, two epipens (since I'm going to run a camp soon that's ~2 hours away from civilization), and I also found out I have not one but TWO infections! One of them I asked about, but the other I didn't even realize was there, a fungal infection on my foot. I just thought it was dry skin. Now I'm also wondering if I have the same thing on my scalp since it's been bothering me, but I completely forgot to ask. So I've got pills and cream and go back in three weeks if either or both haven't cleared up.
Seems my body is really struggling right now. I'm guessing it's stress and emotions from recent events. My schedule is not doing any slowing down but rather picking up over the next few weeks, so I hope with the medications things improve.
I'm off to see my allergist on Monday and get to tell him the diet was working great until all this stress hit. I'm going to ask him about medication for EOE since I don't want to feel this crappy when I'm travelling. Also need to ask about allergy shots.
I don't know if this might explain why my blood sugar has been so high and unstable the past few weeks, or whether the high and unstable blood sugar caused either or both infections. I assume getting rid of them should help my blood sugar issues, though. So next week I get to deal with infections, medications, hot weather, and travel. I really have no idea what to expect in terms of how my diabetes will react!!
wow, when it rains, it pours! i hope you can get everything under control before you go off to camp. you must be so stressed right now with everything thats happened!
omg sounds awful. I hope they can give you something to help with all of the eos symptoms. Did you ever do an endoscopy to see if something else is going on that could be causing those symptoms?
I had an endoscopy in September - that's how I was diagnosed with EoE, the only abnormality found aside from a hernia were increased levels of eos in my esophagus. A normal level of eos is 0, abnormal is maybe up to about 5 if you have acid reflux (which I showed no evidence of), and mine was at 25. The GI and Allergist are both pretty certain it's EoE as it fits with my history and symptoms, plus people just don't get eos levels that high unless they have it. I have a follow up appointment with the GI in October (it was supposed to be like April but kept getting delayed for various reasons) so maybe at that point he'll want to do another scope. Too bad that things were going great until all this horrible stress hit!
Hi Jen, I am sure hoping that things clear up for you soon. The choking doesn't sound like much fun and neither do the infections. High Blood Glucose can sneak up on you. I hope that you feel better soon. Ellen
ok. I just read at the link below that the two treatments that can help eoe symptoms are steroids and proton pump inhibitors. If you're not on a proton pump inhibitor you could try an over the counter one to see if it helps. It won't help the inflammation though. I hope you feel better soon. I think stress makes nearly everything worse!
I don't know why I do these things, but I looked at my test results this morning (we can see them online) and they were negative for bacteria or yeast which is what my doctor thought was causing both reactions. So then I googled my symptoms and "autoimmune" and came up with lichen planus, which is an autoimmune disease. And when I looked at the symptoms, I found not only the three I have now (two "infections" plus my scalp), but also three things that I've had in the past that I've just never gone to the doctor about. (Well, I did go to a walk-in clinic for a huge rash on my face and was told it looked sort of like an allergic reaction to something but the doctor literally said he didn't really know what it was.) So I am 99% sure I have this. Not that I want to go diagnosing myself, I'll let my doctor do his investigation, but I so rarely get sick and it doesn't make sense to me that I'd have and EoE and asthma flare and simultaneously have two infections in completely different areas. It would make way more sense that my immune system is going even more insane at attacking things. But we'll see ...
Interesting, thanks for the information. I'll see what my doctor thinks in a few weeks (and, who knows, maybe I am wrong and things will be all cleared up by then!!) and ask him about these tests.
