I've had the flu for the past week. I've found ephedrine to be an
excellent way to manage cough spasms, you know, the kind where you cough
until you throw up, break ribs and strain muscles? Those coughs? I
mostly skipped them this time.
I went to the doctors on Friday, the 5th day of the flu. I had four
specific, written objectives for this visit and achieved none of them,
so it was another useless attempt at accessing medicine when I was sick,
but I did get a good story out of it.
One of my objectives was to obtain some albuterol for my nebulizer. I
told the doctor I was scavenging my son's asthma meds and using
ephedrine and wanted my own asthma meds. The doctor, a recent grad/new
hire who looked about twelve, informed me that ephedrine wasn't an
asthma drug.
She then listened to my lungs and told me I didn't have asthma.
She also told me I didn't have the flu. In fact, she told me I wasn't
really sick. I asked three people for a flu test, including once in
writing, but was told all three times that "no one has the flu".
Lucky me. My fever hit 103.6 for several days (including the day I saw
her), and never went below 100 degrees for a week. It gave me a
debilitating fever, chills, aches, pains, extreme exhaustion and a cough
for seven solid days. The fever has lifted but I'm still too weak to
walk half a mile.
So today I helpfully emailed the doctor a FAQ on Bronkaid, as well as a
link to the current CDC flu reports (showing flu outbreaks in both my
own area as well as the place I flew out of.)
So, now doctors not only won't allow ephedrine use off-label, but they
won't even allow on-label use. They don't appear to have PDRs or access
to CDC reports, either. I'm pretty confused by this development.
But I'm here to tell you, ephedrine REALLY helped the cough spasms.
Pass it along.
Dally