How Asthma Has Grown With Me

Asthma is a condition that is diagnosed at many different stages of life and at many different levels. However, my experience with asthma has changed over the last year, and this experience has shaped my understanding of the condition.

Asthma was something I was diagnosed with at a very young age. According to the series of events, I was asleep and very breathless and ended up in the hospital with an inhaler and a teeny brownie treat every time I took it.

For a while after this, I was mostly fine.

Many years passed, and the only part of me that asthma affected was my ability to participate in sports and sometimes my ability to play the flute, as it took more breath to perform.

But last summer, until the beginning of November, I experienced a significant drop in my iron levels, and my asthma fell with it. I found myself unable to walk to classes at university anymore without needing to sit down and take my inhaler every five or ten minutes. And even when I was showering or sitting down, I found myself breathless and tired all the time.

I went back to the doctors multiple times and complained until someone gave me a new inhaler and made me track my peak flow. I also started taking iron at the same time, which invariably helped too.

I began to notice changes very slowly. At first, I was still breathless walking and shopping, but I began to gain my life back bit by bit. By the end of March, I began to feel almost normal again, with asthma here and there, but with higher iron levels and the new inhaler, I felt like myself.

But while I feel better now, I think it’s important to share some of the things I do to keep my asthma under control.

• Take my inhaler the amount prescribed to me. It’s so important to start at the beginning and curb the asthma before it grows.

• Practise breathing techniques.

• Get regular exercise.

• Wrap up warm in the winter. This includes a scarf, which protects your neck and throat from becoming exposed to the cold weather.

• Try and manage significant changes in temperature by doing breathing exercises, sitting down and making sure I open up my chest and ribcage to increase breathing capacity.

• Track any changes on a peak flow chart.

• Go back to the doctors if anything changes.

• Make sure I have supportive people surrounding me, who listen and help if any changes to my asthma happen.

With a caring community and regular check-ins with the doctors if there are any changes, I can manage my asthma at home and participate in life as much as I did before it impacted me significantly.

Learning how to be supportive is also an important part of helping someone living with a chronic condition like asthma. Support can look like researching how to support someone having an asthma attack or asking them what best helps them and who to contact if needed. Even listening to them talk about their experiences can be a helpful and kind way of being supportive.