ASTHMA  AS  A MENTAL DISEASE

I've been feeling a little rough for the last 4 weeks.  Around the middle of December I woke up with the taste of sweetness in my mouth, which in the past has always signaled a lung infection--I've had asthma most my life, so I've learned to pick up on the cues.  I called in sick, slept most of the day, and later called my docter to ask for a z-pack prescription. I figured in a few days I'd be right as rain. 

My asthma first started out as severe allergies from cats, when I was seven or so--sneezing and hacking kind of allergies.  But then after a few years it upgraded to wheezing and gasping. When I was first diagnosed all I got for relief was this big dark glass bottle of syrup that my mom administered to me every day. She kept it in the hall closet, in the same place so it always sat in this sticky mess. Unknown to her or my dad, I used to get these intense late night attacks that would keep me bolt upright in bed desperately gasping for air for hours, and leaving me exhausted the next morning.  I really don't know why I never woke my folks during these attacks--I'm not nearly so stoic now.  Instead I'd do my own medicating--going to the closet in the middle of the night to drink right from the lip of that bottle. 

In the middle of my sixth grade year my family & I moved from Alaska to California, and it was there that I was finally sent to a specialist. After my first trip to the allergist I was given my first inhaler.  I can't fully express just how wonderful it was--using it for the first time during an attack, and to have the attack disappear.  Pure magic and liberation!  Along with that inhaler I also got a whole new regimen of preventative medication that my mom doled out to me. As I got older I was left to manage this myself, but to my own thinking all that really mattered was that inhaler.

I never outgrew asthma like everyone said I would. I also never really managed my asthma very well either. It didn't matter that I've had to go to the emergency room enough times that I no longer keep count. Sadly, it's been enough that I know the drill and can usually figure out how long it will be before I get my breathing treatment. The more memorable occassions include the time I was actually admitted for three days, but not before I spent hours in the ER listening to a drunk woman named Suzy growl like a bear, and a little girl screaming, first for her mom and then her dad, as she got her stomach pumped. There was also the Christmas morning visit (read 2 AM visit) in Albuqurque--where the nurses in reindeer antlers trotted about completely unconcerned, even when the 3 gunshot wounds came in--bumping all us asthmatics to the bottom of the queue. 

After all of this you'd think I'd learn, but still I wouldn't manage my asthma. According to my logic I stay away from cats--the historical trigger, and I don't wheeze all that much--relying instead on that divine inhaler to get me out of a jam when it happens. This may be why my docter doesn't allow me to have more than one refill at a time. Every time I run out, I have to go in to beg for another--and it's during these times that we do the dance about my medication. The last time we did this, she finally got fed up and told me if I didn't take my meds consistently I could expect irrepairable damage to my lungs in 10 years time. I told her I'd mend my ways, and really I meant it, and for a few weeks I was diligent. But familiarity really does seem to breed contempt because soon I was pointedly spacing out it out--running the following logic through my head: I've always been fine and I've had it all my life, and goddamn this stuff is pricey why the hell should I have to, blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow, getting back to the recent infection: I finished up my z-pack and figured that was that. The sweet taste went away, but in it's place I got the cough. At first it was annoying, but then it got bad--so racking that I threw my back out. And then it got mean.  I started to cough so hard that the muscles of my bladder would relax--not enough to be embarrassing, but definitely enough to be frustrating--so I stopped drinking fluids. Then I got to coughing so hard that I'd retch.  If I was lucky, this would be hours after a meal; but then I started getting these coughing fits right after I ate--you can guess what the result of that was. Thankfully I never had an audience.  When this happened I also noticed I seemed to lose my breath for a few seconds. But then I'd breath through my nose and all was (relatively) well again.

Soon afer this all started happening I went to see my doctor  (really because I couldn't hack the vomitting) After I soundly flunked the peak air flow test, I was told I'd spent the last two weeks having a persistent and acute asthma attack. That's when we had a serious heart to heart about my flippant attitude about my health. When I left that office, I really had turned a corner--to know that the last two weeks of hell didn't have to happen, and the thought of this being my life in ten years finally penetrated.  I started taking every drug she prescribed to me like my life depended on it, but it was too little too late. 

At 4:30 AM Saturday morning--two days after my doctors visit and the same morning Saddam Hussein was hanged--I woke from a dead sleep by a cough so violent that it brought me bolt upright out of bed, and made me lose control of almost everything--including my breath. The muscles around my throat constricted so much that no air got through. I'm not sure why, but I ran out of my apartment into the hallway. By the time I got the door open, the muscles had begun to relax enough for pinpricks of air to get through, so I stood on tippy toe in a bile-stained nightgown in the middle of the hallway, sucking in as much air as I could. The whole event was maybe 10 seconds long, but god it felt endless.  Maybe it's just that everything's grim when you're woken suddenly that early in the morning, but I remember being being scared witless.  I don't know why people say drowning is a peaceful way to die, b/c I found the feeling of suffocation to be a miserably helpless and desperate one. 

I've since been back to see my doctor--twice--and as a result I'm on even more medication now.  Most of them are short-term, however, to get me back to where I was before. During a low moment I complained to my family, but neither my lipitor-popping grandmother, nor my type II diabetic dad were very sympathetic. I've also had another 5 or 6 attacks, although none like that early morning scare, and they are getting fewer and farther apart.  Also, I've since realized that if I remain calm, that angry, invisible hand around my throat will let go. Needless to say, I'm not feeling nearly so contemptous about my meds now.