Mostly what annoys me about having asthma is when people make stupid comments about it.
There's this one lad I know who's favourite phrase lately seems to be "I can't breathe". He seems to think it's hilarious, but thankfully no-one else does and he usually gets yelled at for it, which is quite funny.
Sometimes, thinking about it, it's hard for me not to verbally lash out at him.
When people haven't experienced asthma for themselves, they can't possibly imagine what going through it feels like.
Personally, I am lucky enough not to have a constantaneous difficulty in breathing. I can breathe quite comfortably unless I over-excercise (which doesnt take very much, unfortunately, as I am quite sporty, too.) or I become stressed, or have a stomach migraine (even WORSE because then you're having a stomach migraine and an asthma attack at the same time).
Also, second hand smoke causes more cancer than smoking itself so no, it's not their lungs, it's your lungs, and anybody else who they have contact with in day to day life.
Can they live with the knowledge that they are slowly killing everyone around them?
For the benefit of people reading this who have never experienced an Asthma "attack", I'm going to try to explain a little better, from my experiences.
Sometimes an asthma attack occurs slowly, you see it coming, feel the signs, get the chest pains, start to wheeze, it's probably the more painful but less terrifying form of attack, in my opinion. You see it coming, you take your inhaler, sit down, pace yourself for a while, and it gradually starts to pass.
Personally, however, and to my dismay, I have more experience of the more abrupt form of asthma. This is something that I wrote a while ago, while I was trying to describe to someone what having an asthma attack triggered in your sleep felt like.
QUOTE
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, and all you can hear is this squealing, scraping, panicked noise, like a horrific combination of screaming and trying to grate a rock with a cheese grater?
And you have no IDEA what is going on around you, you can't see, you can't think, you just have this enormous feeling of pain and horror.
When you've lost all control of your motor functions, and you can feel yourself lying there, convulsing, and you don't know why, and nothing makes sense, because you know all this stuff is going on but your mind doesn't process it.
When your throaght is grating, as though someone is trying viciously to claw their way out, and you're desperate to know what the noise is and you want more than anything for it to stop.
Then the growing sense of dread in your stomach reaches unbearable and you're brought crashing back down to reality. Unable to control your arms or legs, unable to speak, unable to scream you realise with horror that the noise is coming from you, and with a terrifying realization you know what it is.
Because your throaght seizes up and your lungs wont work and that horrible squealing grating noise is your body trying desperately to open your airway even a little and DRAG the air inside, and every SINGLE BREATH sends a wave of agony coursing through your ribcage, and for the millionth time you think it's over. This is it. You are going to die here. It's all over, and you TRULY, truly believe you are going to die.
There is nothing more terrifying than that.
Yet despite the horrific noise that it's taking your body so much effort to create, simply trying to open your air passage sending mass convulsions all over your body, you know no-one can hear you, but you have to make them.
If you don't... the alternative doesn't bear thinking. So you're lying there, feeling helpless, petrifyed thinking each pained breath you take could be your last and you try desperately to regain control of your motor functions, and it's difficult, and it's inaccurate, and it's painful, and it's very primitave, but it's necessary.
You end up flinging yourself ungracefully out of your bed and on to the floor, scrabbling desperately around trying to get to your knees, to your feet, and still with the convulsions. But it's not over. The hardest part is walking.
Shakily you half-run-half-fall into the nearest person's bedroom, gasping and flailing, doing everything you can to wake them up, and you desperately need their help because in that kind of situation there's no way for you to help yourself.
When they wake, they restrain you, in an attempt to stop you causing further injury, bundle you into a car, and drive to the emergency room, because frankly, it takes too long to wait for an ambulance. You get there and they rush you through, and you still can't breathe and this whole time this horrible feeling of dread and fear is eating away at your insides like an awful parasite.
It's too far on for your inhaler to make a difference so you have to have an injection, which they have to hold you down to administer so you dont do yourself any more damage. They give you the needle and they're trying desperately to calm you down.
The effect takes a few minutes, but it feels immediate. Breathing becomes easier and your airway slowly starts to force itself open and the relief that floods through you at that moment is your saving grace. The despair and the fear are all gone, replaced by what's probably the best feeling in the entire world.
So I'm sorry if sometimes I overreact, if I get scared sometimes, when I can feel a less serious asthma attack coming on, but if you had any idea what that felt like, you would never want to feel that way again. Because it isn't worth all the money in the world. Your security, your hope, your happiness, gone in one horrifying moment. I never want to experience that again, and I live in fear of a repeat of those nights. So if I overreact sometimes, I'm sorry, but I don't care.
That is a description of an attack I had when I was younger, probably my most serious, but to this day I have never gotten over it.
I just hope it helps anyone who has never helped that to try and imagine what it feels like for someone.
Reply
May 17, 2008
