Kerri asked me if I could write about growing up with asthma. She mentions that she didn’t really go through this since she was diagnosed at 17. Thanks for the suggestion Kerri, I can think of several posts I’d like to write. I’ll start at the very beginning… a very good place to start. (Points if you recognized the shameless use of a Sound of Music quote)

I was diagnosed with asthma when I was in grade 5. I’ve asked my mom to fill in the little bits and pieces that I can’t remember. She says I was always a cougher and was the atopic type since I was very young. I was that kid who would cough for weeks and weeks after having a cold. I don’t remember it being distressing in my early childhood and my family was very used to it. I probably had mild asthma since I was very young but it was never diagnosed nor treated. My mom now says that my asthma may not be so difficult to control today if we had taken care of it when I was a lil’ gunner, what with airway scarring and the like. I hope she doesn’t feel too guilty, it’s all water under the bridge now after all.

Anyway… grade 5. It started with a cold in the late fall. I swear I coughed non-stop the whole season. I remember  my exasperated teacher discreetly slipping me mint candies to try to get me to stop. As the weather got colder I really struggled to run outdoors. My lungs would burn and I would double over or crouch down to catch my breath. I was athletic and this was distressing to me. I asked my mom to please take me to the doctor because I was having trouble breathing when I tried to run.

I believe, at that initial appointment, my doctor (the same one I still see) attributed it mainly to my lingering cold, but gave me a ventolin inhaler. This helped me to feel better after exercising, but my cough was getting out of control. As winter started, I struggled to breathe every time I stepped outdoors. To the best of my recollection, that’s the first time I ever felt my chest tighten to the point where I could not take a breath in.

I asked to go back to the doctor, who sent me for pulmonary function testing this time. Apparently, my pfts showed good lung function, but the diagnosis of asthma was made because I had such huge reversibility with a bronchodilator. This is also when I got put on flovent. The flovent helped my chronic coughing, but I was still struggling with the cold dry air.

My first major asthma attack came after Christmas when I was speed skating with my class. Speed skating is done on an indoor oval ice track and obviously the indoor air must be kept cool. While I was racing with my classmates, I felt good,  and it wasn’t until I stopped skating and let myself glide that I felt like I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were on fire and I couldn’t speak. My classmates were crowding around me and my teacher finally called my mom, who took me to the ER. I was treated for an asthma attack and sent home late that night. My mom says that this was the first time she ever saw me panic because of my breathing, she said I always looked to indifferent to it before that.

After this, my mom started to get serious about learning about asthma. She’s come a long way, and now she’s a bona fide asthma mom. I’m sure it takes awhile for all parents to get these things figured out, to discriminate between what is normal and what is alarming.

In any case, I struggled through the rest of that winter, and breezed through the summer that followed it. I followed this pattern for the next few years – though some were better than others – until grade 11, when my asthma underwent a colossal shift. I will write about this shift in the next few days.