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Over the years, with my food allergies, I discovered a pattern--I'd find some awesome new pre-prepared food, I would love it, I'd eat it every day, and then one day it wouldn't be in the stores any more. The company would have stopped making it.

But today? Today was worse. I went to my allergist for a checkup, and he told me that they've stopped making my asthma inhaler.

Not because it has bad side effects (because it has practically no side effects). Not because it doesn't work (because it does). Because the company would have to reformulate the inhaler to meet legal requirements about CFCs, and basically not very many people use cromolyn sodium inhalers to treat their asthma anymore so it just isn't profitable enough for them to reformulate it.

(As a side note: I have no idea why anyone would ever want to get rid of this stuff. I mean, just look at this origin story.)

Which means that, because my asthma isn't bad enough to require a steroid-based treatment, I get to go back to using a nebulizer machine. Morning and evening. I used to use a nebulizer machine in the evenings, and when I was told that I could just use my inhaler all the time, it was so freeing.

Using a nebulizer machine takes five or six minutes. It's quite loud. It's very large and heavy. (I am informed that newer versions are quieter, smaller, and less heavy, but all three do still apply.) Using an inhaler takes less than a minute. It's almost silent. It fits in a pocket and barely weighs anything.

When I used a nebulizer machine, I couldn't stay up later than anyone else in my family without worrying about waking them up with the noise, even though I had my own room.

This news about the inhalers, of course, comes right as I am leaving for college. Where I will be, you know, living in the same room with someone else.

I think I just took three steps backward from being comfortable with myself as an asthmatic.

I know this is a capitalist country, but really?


Writing news, however, is better.

150 words on a story that now has a main character, who even has a name. I false-started this one a couple of times, but this beginning feels way more solid than anything else I've come up with.

Also, I printed out what I now fondly call the "dead people in lakes story" to go through.

Date: 2009-08-25 04:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kayjayoh.livejournal.com
Well, that would require healthcare in the US to not be royally screwed up.

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