Dunning-Krueger Anyone?

It was Alexander Pope who uttered the famous phrase "a little learning is a dangerous thing" and boy oh boy was yesterday afternoon, night and this morning proof of that! I'm about to rant, disability rant.. rant rant it's the disability rant. If I were ever to turn rapper this would be my rap.

So last week it was paint exposure leading to asthma, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars, spend a week tamping it down. Happened against last night, but harder now. Sitting in Price Smart, minding my own business eating a hot dog in the food court when I turned to Jim and said, "My throat is tingling..." and the wheezing started. No, it wasn't the hotdog, the condiments or anything else I ingested because that would have involved lips and tongue tingling too. But I did spot what it was quickly.

It was a grinning blonde gringa standing at the membership counter around twenty yards away. She had a small poodle on a leash. A poodle in a store with a sign banning all but service dogs. I got up and scuttled away to shop, mistakenly thinking that huge warehouse was plenty large to avoid the dander. Nope. Over the course of twenty minutes every single time I turned around there she and the dog were and my wheezing increased. At one point I purposely went to the other end of the store to get away from them just to have them stroll up to me.

Why was I even hanging about? Because Jim was embroiled in one of his favorite things, his lengthy time-consuming thing, bargaining.  Our living room tv died and he was trying to twist the manager's arm into providing free delivery on a huge honking tv of his dreams and the large console table we wanted to put it on. The one he ended up buying is longer than I am tall.

Eventually I just abandoned the full cart with him and RAN to the pharmacy where I started frightening the techs by buying all the usual suspects meds and crazy doping up in the pharmacy. They kept trying to get me to sit down, not understanding I just needed to leave the building at that point. Got in the car, switched on the ac and waited for relief. All I could do. Rather scary. 

One of the things that happened, that happened last night is that I had a panic attack, goes hand in hand with the asthma. All I can say is it always feels like dying or like I imagine dying might feel, it's the worst. I start crying and blubblering, particularly since I left the ativan in my meds bag, back at the house. Eventually all the meds kicked in and it all started to lessen. I was left spent, just utterly drained.

I know I face another week of related problems and infections from another bad attack. I slept about ten minutes last night.

Jim bent the manager's ear while he was doing his sharpish bargaining. Poodle lady told to leave. I got an apology for them not even enforcing their own rules.

Get up this morning. On social media and was talking to friends about last night. Someone claiming to be a medical professional I don't know started chiming in that my claims of my own asthma last night are not even possible. The more I tried talking to this person, the more they claimed it was impossible to have what I have and have certain medications not work, or not be admitted to the hospital. They kept trying to hurl studies about asthma at me, insist that the peak flow meter was needed, not understanding I've been dealing with this for years. My critical care pulmo says that peak flow meters are useless in mast cell allergic asthma and not predictive in that stuff. Kept saying there's no way I had an asthma diagnosis without being on certain meds. Knitter please! I've tried everything literally on the market, we're out of untried meds at this point. I take the ones that work, my doctor knows about it and thinks this is the best course of action.

This person isn't a doctor or even a nurse, yet thought they knew better than my doctor. I should have simply blocked them at the first rude comment, but I stupidly thought I would educate them about mast cell. But I didn't realize I was dealing with a pretty advanced case of Dunning-Krueger. 

If I hadn't been sick as hell I would have spotted it sooner and ditched. I wouldn't have reacted with a pile of eff words, I would have said "Bless your heart!" disengaged and breathed in, breathed out and moved on. I just never learn. We sure love our own ideas, don't we, even the ones not rooted in reality. Never get incurious, or decide you know everything in the world. It always bites you in the rear eventually.


 


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