Proposed Asthma Medicine Warnings

I'm about a week behind in my email reading, mostly because I've been working on the novel so much. WaPo ran this story last week about three asthma medicines that might get warning labels "stating that the drugs could increase the chances of severe asthma episodes that could result in death."

Basically the drugs reduce the frequency of asthma attacks but when you have one it is more severe and can result in death. The three drugs are Advair, Serevent (which I thought was taken off the market) and Foradil.

I was on Advair for years until I got pseudotumor and told my family doctor I didn't want to take anything with steroids in it if I didn't have to. Then she started me on Foradil, although I'm not taking it right now.

Interestingly I've had to go to the ER and been admitted for asthma while on Advair and Cullen almost died while on it when he was six. He had only one millimeter of space left in his trachea by the time I got him to the ER. (I probably have talked about this before.) Cam was on it when he has had several trips to the ER requiring IV steroids.

For obvious reasons the article was extremely interesting to me. If you or someone you love has asthma you should read it.