Asthmtic? Tell me about it....

[lagilman]

Yes that's right, this writer has a use for you. Sing out about your meds, your treatment, what it feels like to have an attack, the things you HATE about having asthma... whatever you want. I'll be in the corner, taking notes and hrmmming with real interest and sympathy.

This is for posterity. Tell me, how do you feel? And please, be honest.

Comments

[stellatangdele.livejournal.com]

Are you writing about an asthmatic character?

[lagilman]

I am. How could you tell? :-D

[stellatangdele.livejournal.com]

Well, you are a writer, and you wrote that you would be taking notes.

My own allergy-induced and ultra-cold humid air induced asthma isn't bad enough to really give you vivid descriptions like some of your posters have.

If it's a young adult character you are writing about, the only asthma experience I have from that age in my life is needing 13 minutes to run the mile (I wasn't diagnosed until adulthood).

If you are friends with Shweta Narayan, perhaps you could look at her postings on the subject with her permission.

[stellatangdele.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to add that perfumes, strong scents, cigarette smoke and any kind of smoke set off asthma for me and others I know.

[stellatangdele.livejournal.com]

And aerosols are the worst for setting off a coughing attack.

[treize64.livejournal.com]

Exercise-induced asthma, joining the party when it is least wanted, particularly during high school track practice.

[threeoutside.livejournal.com]

My worst trigger is book dust. It isn't reliable, though. Until I walk into a used book store, I don't know if I'm going to have an attack or not. And it can be the same bookstore I didn't have an attack in the week before.

Makes my lungs feel exactly like two sopping-wet saturated sponges. Most unpleasant. My inhaler chases it right away, but no matter how quickly I get it beaten back. I'm off my pins for the rest of the day. I can only think that the over-production of so many what are they, histamines? - is a huge energy drain on the body.

Fortunately, mine is a mild case, I only have the inhaler to use As Needed, which works out to maybe 4 times a year, if that. Unfortunately, the whole cascade of allergic reaction also somehow involves the lower GI tract. That's every bit as unpleasant as you could possibly imagine it to be.

[wrenn.livejournal.com]

This.
(except for the GI tract stuff)

It can be exhausting to have even a mild episode.

Mine is allergy induced. Various allergies. Get exposed to enough of 'em, I go down.

allergy meds, singulair, albuterol inhalers (rescue). I have steroidal inhalers... don't have to use them every day, though my doctor would like me to. I found that singulair made daily steroids unnecessary.

I scored my nebulizer by having an episode in the doctors waiting room. (I had a cold. I had an already scheduled appointment on what would have been day 5 of the cold. I was told I shouldn't have waited. Day 3 and it starts getting worse.... see a doctor. )

Most standard use of my nebulizer? -- After I've gone to bed. Sometimes - often spring or fall, after I lie down, I start wheezing. Then I use it.

[msdori.livejournal.com]

If you're at all prone to gastric reflux, that will also make you cough when you lie down. My doc put me on Nexium, and that really helped with the asthma because the reflux fluids get aspirated wothout you necessarily knowing that it's happening, and the acid exacerbates the asthma.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

The GI symptoms are due to the fact that there are more receptors for histamine (released from the allergic reaction) in the GI tract than just about any place in the body. Try taking some zantac (ranitidine) the next time you have an attack.

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

I thought I knew what asthma felt like, 'cause I'd had it twice: like my lungs wouldn't fill up all the way, like there was a weight on them. After I used the inhaler, I could take a deep breath again.

It turns out that the coughs I've been getting with my colds for the past twenty years were also asthma. It felt as if the post-nasal drip and stuff coming up were clogging my throat, so I would take nose stuff and cough stuff and I would still cough-choke for two or three weeks. It turns out the windpipe was constricted. The inhaler takes care of that, too. (No doctor ever told me this, dammit.)

Side effect of the inhaler: until it settles, you're just a little... speedy. My hands don't shake, but I notice it when I hold a pen and write. I heard an anecdote about a marching band student conductor who was told not to conduct right after using an inhaler, because he went just a bit too fast. The effect goes away fairly quick.

EDIT: I don't wheeze.

[wrenn.livejournal.com]

Not just albuterol inhalers, but also albuterol in a nebulizer causes this 'speedy' thing. It can also noticeably elevate your heart rate.

Dizziness after using an inhaler happens.

And the instructions - to rinse your mouth out after using an inhaler, especially the steroidal ones, is necessary. You are chancing a fungal infection at the back of your throat if you don't.

Dreading respiratory infections as noted below is also correct. There have been a handful of times (not always, and it was most notable the first time) I've had to go on a short duration high dose dose of steriods (prednisone pills), to handle bronchitis or pneumonia. The first time it felt like my lungs were on fire, waxing and waning for a few days. Like mild to moderate heart burn, but not localized, difuse throughout, where my lungs were. It never happened quite to that extent as the fist time, though. Though... Doctors have no problem prescribing cough syrup with codeine. With that stuff, you can't cough. Or rather, it takes a great deal of effort to do so. It's also a case of take a scant teasponfull, and fall over.

[qnofhrt.livejournal.com]

I only have one reliable trigger for my asthma - grass fertilizer, which makes spring a challenge. There are several hardware stores I cannot go into at all because they keep bags and bags of the stuff INSIDE.

I don't have "typical" asthma symptoms in that I don't wheeze. If I'm having real problems, it's more of a gurgle but usually it's a "can't catch my breath" sort of feeling or coughing. I use a rescue inhaler and one of two controller meds - either Advair or Flovent. If you're looking for more info on the medications, I lecture about the drugs used in asthma to pharmacy students and would be happy to help you out.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Asthma sucks, especially cough-variant asthma because you don't wheeze until things are really, really bad. I was not diagnosed until my early thirties when it got so bad that I could not walk up a gentle incline despite being reasonably fit. Still didn't wheeze. My lungs felt like I was breathing underwater half of the time and breathing fire the other half of the time.

In retrospect, many of the depressing dark nights and panic attacks I had as a teen where I woke gasping for breath thinking that I was dying was that same undiagnosed asthma (I was sleeping on a feather bed).

Singulair and inhaled steroids have made major differences in my ability to enjoy life. Spring is still a misery as is fall (I am allergic to many inhaled things including mold spores, pollens, anything white that blooms) but the meds have literally changed my life. My ability to move at elevation and hike uphill has gotten better, not worse, as I've aged because I can breathe. I love skiing because there's no pollen or mold on the ski slope, and for me cold air and exercise are not triggers.

I fear and dread any respiratory ailment, and up my inhaler dose accordingly when I do get sick to try to keep the bugs out of my lungs/creating hypersensitive reactive airways. While Prednisone is a life-saver that bails me out of bronchitis and those body-wrenching coughs, I hate it with a passion because it plays horrible havoc with my mind and my body, and if I don't taper off of it I go through this godawful withdrawal complete with shakes. Normal people can just stop taking the quick bursts of Pred without taper. I can't.

If I could make the damned thing go away with a wave of my hand, I would.

[rosefox]

I don't have asthma, but I do have this useful link to the sound of someone having a get-to-the-ER-now asthma attack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA9C_aCH7F0

Be warned that it could be the soundtrack to a horror movie. I had to turn it off after a few seconds. Completely terrifying. (Someone in the comments suggests that the poster may have been crying from panic while attempting to breathe.)

EDIT: Slightly less horrifying and also useful: different coughing sounds, including some that can be caused by asthma.

http://children.webmd.com/pertussis-whooping-cough-10/coughing-sounds

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

I have had asthma since I was 5 years old, so if you want more information than the above, send me an email.

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

How old does the asthmatic have to be? My youngest has it, and I can quiz her if you need that perspective.

Me, I used to occasionally get symptoms, but I haven't had anything like it in decades.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Infuriating. Betrayed by your own body. Unable to control it. Terrifying.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Damnit, I wrote a whole long multivalent answer to this, and LJ's charming new comments form went and lost it, didn't save it, didn't post it, didn't do nothing, grrr...

So this is abbreviated. My dad had classic childhood asthma, with all the traditional months-in-bed of his generation (b 1920). His treatment involved burning pyamids of powder and having to inhale the smoke, oh yes. He grew out of it.

Me, I grew into it. Bronchial child turned wheezy in adolescence, full-blown asthmatic by twenty, chronic but more or less controlled ever since. (More or less meaning that it's nearly killed me two or three times: those would be the times of less control.)

I've had emergency surgery and great pain and serious illness, and asthma is still the scariest thing that's ever happened inside my body. Breathing is ... inherent, and when it quits on you - well. Your lungs clench like fists and you gasp and wheeze and can't get air. And your remedy is an inhaler, but you can't inhale, so... yeah. And all the stress and panic tightens everything up further, exacerbates it all.

I've had an adrenalin injection one time; that's extraordinary, like every cell in my body was suddenly opening out like a flower.

But afterwards is always good: exhaustion and endorphins like after a long run, and the weary achy pleasure of simple breathing. And, formerly, smoking: first thing I wanted after used to be a cigarette. It's all about the lungs.

Email me if you want more: from dull details of my life in medication to exciting descriptions of how it feels to turn blue from the inside out to the fullblown narrative of how I nearly died in a snowstorm. My life is your plaything.

[john williams (from livejournal.com)]

Not a single Princess Bride comment, eh? (It might be syntactically different, but all the words are there.)

[paulliver.livejournal.com]

I think it means what she thinks it means.

[vierran45.livejournal.com]

I have cough-variant asthma that wasn't diagnosed until I was a bit past 40. Then again, it didn't start acting up until I was past 35 or so. Before that I was only allergic to cats & dogs, but looks like my allergies were getting worse with age.

Before I got the diagnosis I had a constant cough which lasted several months. I had these full-body cough attacks that felt like I was choking or would puke any minute because there was so much mucus and I couldn't breathe properly. They were often caused by even the slightest exercise (going to the market, 5 min walk away and coming home and climbing to the second floor) or by changes in temperature (from cold to warm).

I am now on asthma medication and it has helped immensely. No more coughing until I choke attacks. I can also walk and exercise without feeling like I'm running out of oxygen.

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

Allergies grew into asthma. Housedust is one, and how I resent having to be a fanatic vacuumer. And my antique Rainbow vacuum just got sick and the local (good ) repair guy has retired ,,, so I am dependent on the company who want to sell me a *new* one for a zillion bucks.
Started with a dry cough that often couldn't stop.It would create such a spasmodic vacuum that I would almost throw up - not fun on no air. All sorts of rib muscles hurt. No energy that slowly grew into the realization that there was no air in the system. Drove to the docs who said that yes I was beginning to wheeze, here's the inhailer, and oh your blood pressure is way high. Well what would they expect after driving in heavy traffic on no air.
And every prescription also costs megabucks.
The disease sucks.

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

And, with the sort that starts slowly like mine, one doesn't realize that the brain has turned to mush until the meds have finally taken hold. Then one has to go out and get a Darth Vader respirator before starting to evict the ecosystems that are evolving in the dust on the book shelves and under the stereo.

[cedunkley.livejournal.com]

I had pretty severe asthma when I was a child, which, along with other allergies found me frequently in the hospital. Its a strange very isolating experience not being able to breath.

Body language is a big thing for someone in the throws of an asthma attack. I was never prone to the coughing asthma. Mine was my breathing slowly getting shallower, like my lung kept shrinking. Sometimes my asthma, even when severe, was very quiet. Other times it was full blown wheezing along with it.

I wasn't able to take some of the inhalers so they gave me Marax, a pill that worked well. However, it also made me a zombie. I never went anywhere without at least one pill on me somewhere. I got into the habit of breaking the little pill in half and only taking the half unless it was a full blown decide to maybe go to the emergency room attack.

I learned how to function with very little breathe, making the most out of the little gasps of air I was able to force my lungs to take.

Its almost killed me a few times, one of which where I needed an adrenaline shot to bring me back. As another commentor mentioned above, that was an amazing experience. Imagine drowning in air and slipping away and suddenly every part of you is alive, and everything is vibrant and heady.

To touch back on body language for a moment, Rory Culkin did an excellent job with an asthmatic kid's body language in the movie Signs.

[warriorofworry.livejournal.com]

Second try:
I thought asthma was all about not being able to breathe, so as my persistent cough got worse and worse it never even crossed my mind that it might be asthma.
I coughed myself into a severe hernia that put me in the hospital/emergency surgery last year (to the day!) but I still wasn't diagnosed as asthmatic until months later.
I have only mild allergies. But I've had to rehome my beloved fe-lions (see my icon for one of them) and I'm still grieving that loss. I had to reacquaint myself with the vacuum cleaner, and clean more than I want to.
Medication: I'm on enough medications to put a tottering 80 year old to shame. They only work so well. The albuterol inhalers make me shake so much I can barely type (a key component of my job) and I am reluctant to use them in public (I look like I have DTs).
My body produces copious amounts of mucus. Even when I do the "cough into your arm" thing, or slip into a bathroom to blow my nose 80 times, people look at me like Typhoid Mary (this is *not* paranoia, by the way; people move away, give me the hairy eyeball, and make comments, the mildest of which is "shouldn't you be at home?")
The coughing also causes lower GI "problems", not just the histamines, but the physical effect of coughing on the peristaltic system . . . yeah, eww.
It gets worse when I worry about coughing (yeah, irony - but whenever I start I get a near-panic attack that I'm not going to be able to stop). Dust, pets, other people's smoke, bathroom air fresheners. Temperature or barometric changes. Going in or out during the winter or during really hot weather. The perfume of the person standing next to me in line. Indigestion. Physical activity. Vacuuming (more irony). Books (and right now full bookshelves line my bedroom). Talking.
And the thing is that I stopped noticing the accommodations I made to the disease, so that it was a shock to notice that I avoided activity, other people, wasn't going out anymore, didn't go to parties, avoided the telephone (another key component of my job). Point being that literally, no matter how bad it is, one just lives with it and up to a point, ceases to notice.

[slweippert.livejournal.com]

I have untreated (by a doctor anyway) asthma. I developed it after a nasty bout of flu gave me pneumonia a few years ago.

What does an attack feels like?
My lungs have suddenly shrunk to the size correct for a two-year-old
The air is full of invisible sharp particles, like rock dust, and I can't get enough air.
I have to time my speech/breaths so I can converse normally, even when not in the middle of an attack

What I do to manage it?
I take 24 hr allergy pills every day, even in winter to dry up my sinuses and lungs
Vicks Vapo Rub is a gift from the almighty for which I am grateful
I use a generic rescue inhaler a kindly doctor prescribed for me when I absolutely have to. When I run out, I'll have to spend the $80-$100 to see him for a refill so I only use it when I absolutely must.

Edited to add:
Sometimes I wheeze, sometimes I whistle or hum. I clear my throat a lot. The other reason, besides money, why I don't like to take a hit from the inhaler is it give me a head rush that would make a druggie jealous. Like eating chocolate covered espresso beans while drinking monster energy drinks. I am nervous, excited and sleep is not happening.

[paulliver.livejournal.com]

I was on an inhaler for many years, but then I mostly gave up dairy products and started yoga breathing exercises. The yoga didn't cure asthma; I was using the same percentage of air but breathing in more, so the same percentage meant more oxygen.

[msdori.livejournal.com]

My triggers are dust, exercise, and really cold air. Since I live in a 250 year old house, which until a year ago had an ancient fuel oil furnace that sent soot up through the floorboards, dust was my primary problem. Well, and cold air for three or four months out of the year.

If you have dust allergies, cleaning is a problem. Let things go too long and just dusting will make me sick. Which means I avoid dusting, which of course just makes things worse. I have one of those Darth Vader painting masks, but most of the time I think, "Well, I'm just going to do this little bit," but the little bit turns into fifteen minutes and then half an hour and then I start wheezing and my family yells at me. You'd think I'd learn, but no. in fact, if I start cleaning without the mask, and don't stop when I start wheezing, I can usually count on having problems for three or four days.

Exercise is the sneaky one. I'm usually fine as long as I'm moving, because I tend to regulate my breathing, but the second I stop, it feels like everything just closes up and I start hyperventilating because it feels like the air I am getting just isn't enough. That's when it gets scary, because I know that I am getting oxygen, and that if I keep hyperventilating I'll just make it worse, but my body is telling me BREATHE, DAMMIT and that's really hard to override. I have to count out the breaths when that happens, inhale for eight, exhale for eight. The inhale usually isn't a problem, but holding the exhale for the count doesn't always go smoothly because I run out of exhale at about four.

If the air is really cold, like, in the low thirties or below freeaing, just walking outside without something over my mouth and nose will be painful after a couple of breaths and there goes the hyperventilation again. If I have to walk a long way in the cold, or, God forbid, hurry, I start gulping air and my throat feels like I'm trying to breathe frozen jello. The bottom two thirds of my lungs might as well not be there.

Stairs and hills are the worst. Before we had the furnace replaced, just walking up the stairs to my bedroom could make me short of breath in the winter, because we have no heat in the upper floor and just before the landing you hit the bottleneck where the rising heat hits the cold air and kind of stalls. if I'm doing a lot of stairs, it helps if I deliberately hyperventilate for about ten seconds (and you'd be surprised how many deep breaths you can take in ten seconds), and then count the breaths as I climb.

I take Singulair and use the Advair diskus, which is the inhaled steroids. I also have albuterol rescue inhalers stashed evereywhere--my bedside table, my purse, my knitting bag, the car. If things are really bad, cough syrup with codeine is the only thing that will help. But that stuff is not really portable, so I usually have Tylenol 3 with me when I'm out and about and I end up with a coughing fit, because, hey, codeine stops the cough.

I also have to be wary of colds, because if a cold gets into my chest, I'm likely to get bronchitis, which means about a month of constant coughing, because the lungs are really sensitive for a few weeks after the bronchitis is gone and things that normally wouldn't bother me will trigger coughing fits. Especially laughing. I'm pretty sure you've heard that wheezy cough thing I do when I'm really surprised into laughing, right? That tends to scare people who don't know me. Sometimes, if something is really hilarious, I don't even get the cough, it's just a long series of nearly silent exhaled wheezes, followed by a severe coughing spell. And just laughing like normal people do will trigger a coughing fit if I do it for long. If the asthma is acting up, I have to tell people, "Don't make me laugh, I'll cough." (This usually happens after I've already been laughing enough to make me cough.). But damned if I'm going to stop laughing at stuff, no matter how much it aggravates the asthma.

Okay, wow, I didn't realize I had that much to say about it. *g*

[msdori.livejournal.com]

LJ cut this bit off.

My dad had asthma, and he told stories about kneeling on the bed and holding onto the bedpost trying to breathe. He also told the story about when he went to enlist during WWII and during the physical, the orderly was taking a chest measurement for who knows what reason, and Daddy inhaled and his chest expanded so much that it startled the orderly, who said, "Damn, you must be a strong son of a bitch!" and then, immediately, "Scuse me! I didn't mean to say son of a bitch!" This is even funnier because my dad was 5'7", and skinny to boot.

[msdori.livejournal.com]

Part 2

Before the new furnace, I would end up on prednisone a couple of times a year. I HATE prednisone. The first day, I can't sleep, and boy do I get a lot done. The rest of the time it slows me down.

Every time I go to my doctor, even if it's for something ompletely unrelated to asthma, he makes me do a peak flow check, which is blowing into a doohickey to see how high you can lift a little plastic piece. If the number is too low, I get the prednisone because the lungs are so inflamed that they're almost completely closed. And the bad thing is, as others have said, that I don't notice that things are that dire until I can't even make it to the landing without stopping to breathe. When things are that bad, I can't sleep at all lying flat, and have to prop myself into a sitting position. I've developed a rule that if I have to sleep sitting up for four days in a row, I'd better get my ass to the doctor.

Also, gastric reflux can trigger a coughing fit when I lie down, so I probably should count the Nexium as an asthma medicine, because I saw such a drastic difference when I started taking it.