I’ve had asthma now for three weeks. Or perhaps I should say, I’ve had the diagnosis for three weeks. And the honeymoon period is now over. I’ve told most of my friends and family about my affliction, the medicine is doing it’s thing (I hope) and it’s all getting to be very routine. I remember to take my brown inhaler morning and evening, and I always carry the blue inhaler with me – either in my handbag or in the pocket of my running jacket.
I’m thinking I also need to keep the blue inhaler beside my bed at night. I woke up suddenly, in the middle of a very exciting dream, last Tuesday night (actually it was Wednesday morning, 1.15am) with a searing pain across my back. As if somebody had stuck a (very large, flat) knife between my shoulder blades and wasn’t going to remove it any time soon. I lay in bed for a minute, breathing deeply and hoping it would go away. Which it didn’t. So I rolled over on to my tummy, knees drawn up underneath me, and did one of those yoga ‘cat’ stretches. (Which is usually great for helping lower back pain.) That didn’t help much either.
And then it hit me – is this what they call an asthma attack? I’ve experienced this kind of pain a couple of times before in my life. Most recently while sitting in a car driving back from a jaunt to Græsted. Thankfully I was a passenger (DH was driving that day) because I was sitting there thinking, “I’m having a heart attack!” It took me a good half hour to get rid of the pain in my chest and scared me no end.
Anyway, back to the early hours of Wednesday morning… I thought I should try my blue asthma inhaler – maybe that would do the trick? Managed to slide out of bed and hobble down the stairs. Sat down on the kitchen bench and took a deep puff. Deep breaths, control your breathing, control your breathing. Now, to be honest, I’m not really sure if it was the medicine that kicked in, or wishful thinking, but it seemed to ease the pain in my back within seconds and I was able to go back up to bed and fall asleep fairly quickly.
Was it an asthma attack? Or something completely different? Hope my fellow asthma sufferers and helpful blog readers can help me out on this one!
Have a marvelous Monday and keep your wits (and your inhalers) about you! 🙂