Sigh.

[brinshannara]

When I was a child, my father would usually give me cough syrup to help with my colds/flus/etc.

I used to love my cough syrup. It was a sickly-sweet, thick, clear liquid called Alupent.

At about age 10, I discovered that it's not your standard cough syrup. Alupent is a liquid bronchodilator. That's to say that it works to stop asthma-induced coughing and wheezing and keeps your bronchial tubes from going into spasm (which is actually what an asthma attack is).

Since I discovered I had asthma (which my parents had neglected to mention to me until that day when I was 10 and found the medical forms for school that were necessary to file each year), my parents decided that I was old enough to use an inhaler when my lungs weren't co-operating, mostly because inhalers work so much faster than a liquid.

I don't use my inhaler often. My asthma is extremely mild, as far as asthma goes. My first girlfriend's asthma was severe -- she regularly took her "rescue" inhaler (the bronchodilator that you'll see most asthmatics with) 4-5 times a day. This isn't good. Me, I take mine maybe an average of once a month over the course of the calendar year.

Unless, of course, I'm sick. When I'm sick and when it drops into my lungs, I take it every 4-6 hours like clockwork. And I hate every second of it.

I hate how a cold is never just a cold for me. While I can run for the bus and not start wheezing, I can't get a simple cold and not wheeze. It pisses me off.

I just took my inhaler for the first time in over a month, because I was talking to my brother on the phone and started to cough uncontrollably. I couldn't get a stupid sentence out, and suddenly, I was wheezing a lot more than I have in the last two days.

I can now breathe, and it doesn't feel like there's a thousand-pound weight sitting on my chest anymore, but my hands are shaking, my heart rate has jumped to 116 (temporarily. It'll drop off again soon.) and I hate that I'm reliant on a stupid chemical to make my lungs perform the way nature intended them to.

Grr.

(Although, my brother just called back to check up on me, see how I'm doing. That made me smile.)

Comments

[superswank.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you're going through. I had asthma pretty severely as a child but it dropped off a lot in my teen years; now I only suffer from the hacking cough, wheeze, etc. when I get a chest cold. I carry an inhaler with me all the time, however, just in case - I remember how terrifying it is to not be able to breathe.

So glad you're doing better. :)

[brinshannara]

Doing even better today, thanks. :) Very little wheezing (comparitively, anyways) and my head is much less stuffy. I do not have to stuff Kleenex up my nose to stop it from running! Yaaaaay!

It often astounds me how often so many people take breathing properly for granted. To not have to concentrate on drawing air in and out is something precious, and I know I take it for granted too, when I'm in good health. But it's absolutely terrifying when you just CAN'T do it properly, absolutely. I carry my inhaler with me 24/7 for that reason, too.

The fact that both my parents smoke never did help my lungs, either. :P

Glad that you were able to grow out of yours, for the most part. Mine's gotten a little more mild since I stopped living with the two chimneys, but I now have very little tolerance to any smoke. I think I like it better, this way. :)