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X-ray came back negative. "No further action".
So what the fuck am I supposed to do with this lovely new-found reduced lung capacity or peak flow or whatever the fuck? What happens when this puffer runs out?
Oh, apparently my mum didn't have adult asthma, she had normal asthma and grew out of it. I must've got that arse-about.
hippy-
What happens when this puffer runs out?
Repeat prescription.
If the blue one doesn't work, you may be put on a brown one.
When you get a cold / chest infection, you get a TUE, and will turn into a machine.
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what the fuck am I supposed to do with this lovely new-found reduced lung capacity or peak flow or whatever the fuck?
What's your peak flow when you're on the salbutamol? Have you been back to your GP yet to discuss a treatment regime? If you're consistently doing 70% of predicted PF, they will probably want to get you started on beclomethasone to reduce the inflammation which is the likely cause of your reduced PF, especially if salbutamol alone isn't getting you back up to some decent numbers. Salbutamol and other beta-2 agonists treat bronchospasm, which is the usually temporary constriction of the airways caused by some trigger event (allergen, irritant or exercise etc.), but if your airways are constricted all the time you probably have underlying inflammation (typically caused by infection or autoimmune action) which is treated with beclomethasone or other glucocorticosteroids. Most of us experience a mixture of both, so we get to take both classes of drugs at different times.
As @TW says, the long term prognosis if you have asthma is a lot of repeat prescriptions and annual visits to the surgery to see the asthma nurse to check that your treatment programme is working. The good news is that the drugs actually work, so now we live* with asthma rather than dying from it as my grandmother did.
*mostly. Asthma still causes some fatalities. You're lucky you moved over here, Oz is just below us in the league table :-)
NotThamesWater
gbj_tester
Yes, there is a whole range of diseases which can have reduced lung function as a symptom. The most common is COPD, which is an umbrella term covering a variety of causes of reduced lung function. You may get a definitive diagnosis from X-Ray, but you can also have clear X-Rays and still have COPD. On the other hand, if you can significantly restore your peak flow using bronchodilators, you almost certainly have boring old asthma, as COPD is only marginally affected by asthma drugs. As Wikipedia says,
But you can substitute "life" for "COPD" in that sentence :-)