Off Topic: Oh, Asthma

Someone asked me what asthma feels like.
This picture from the University of Calgary website pretty much sums it up.

While everyone else in Adelaide is off enjoying the great spring weather, I am stuck indoors with my inhaler. While being indoors for a long stretch really isn't such an ordeal for someone who loves reading and writing anyway and has a few reviews that need she needs to catch up on. But, anyway, asthma is a bit of a scary disease. Here's why:

Asthma can strike at any time.

I take my medications like I am supposed to, and try to avoid things that may it worse (long aeroplane rides for example,) but that doesn't mean that I never have an attack. Anyway, an asthma attack can happen at any time, meaning that no matter where I am or where I'm going and for how short a time, I always have to have my medication on me.

People really don't know how to react when someone has an attack.

This includes people in the medical profession. I remember being in the admissions area of a public hospital and the nurse kept asking me for my personal details while I gasped for breath and tried to pass her my medicare card and driver's licence, which had all relevant details on there. For some reason, and despite me barely being able to breathe, the nurse was insistent that she "hear it from me."

As a rule, asthma attacks tend to be misunderstood by a lot of people. Usually people either run away or over-react. If you want to help me, all you need to do is let me sit down for a while, pass me my medication and ask if I'm feeling okay. If I'm turning blue, please call an ambulance.

On another note, not being able to breath is unpleasant. I really do not force myself to have an attack to get out of unwanted activities. Believe me, I'd much rather do housework and still have the ability to breathe, than be sitting and unable to breathe.

Smoking.

It's your choice if you want to smoke. You are welcome to your personal beliefs about smoking. In fact, some people with asthma smoke and claim that it does not trigger an attack. However, please understand that I do not want to be around people who are smoking, because it triggers asthma. I stick to non-smoking areas for this reason. Although many people respect non-smoking areas, you always seem to get that one person who will defiantly light up inside a bus shelter, usually while standing beside the no-smoking sign. No, you are not being cool or making a statement about how hard done by you are. You're making things harder for people who choose to smoke but stick to designated areas and you're making things uncomfortable for people who stick to non-smoking areas for a reason. 

* * * 

In conclusion, asthma sucks. Any disease sucks. But right now, I'm suffering from a bout of it and I really wish that it would go away ...

Comments

Andrew Leon said…
I did see something, recently, about some breakthrough in relation to asthma, but I didn't read it, and I don't remember where I saw it. :(
I know. That's very helpful.
28 September 2014 at 09:29
Kathryn White said…
Hmm ... You may need to be a bit more specific.
28 September 2014 at 17:50
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more