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! 🙂

When the doctor told me I had asthma a couple of weeks back, I was – to put it mildly – giddy with excitement (see last week’s post for a bit of background). I felt like I might be able to get a new lease of life, if you will. However, when I announced the news to family and friends, their reaction was unanimous. “Oh no, poor you!”

Which got me thinking along quite different lines…Are there things I can no longer do? Things I’m no longer ‘allowed’ to do? Can I still go on the rollercoasters at Tivoli? Foods I should avoid? Foods I should eat? If it’s windy, can I go outside?! Eek! I even caught myself sitting up in bed at 10.30pm one night last week, iPhone in hand, checking a website about whether it was safe for people with asthma to scubadive… For Pete’s sake, I don’t even like snorkelling or, for that matter, swimming in areas where it’s all dark on the seabed…scary! There’s no way you’d get me on a boat with a gas tank on my back, asthma or no asthma! 😉 [For the record, I closed down the browser at that point so, if you want to find out about scubadiving with asthma, you’ll have to go google.]

Two weeks into the (brown inhaler) medicine and I’m beginning to feel a difference. I run around at home a lot in the morning and I feel ‘lighter’ somehow. I used the blue inhaler a lot the first few days but don’t feel the need for it now unless I’m going out to run or on my bike. Or if I’m excited! 😉 Have had a few headaches (not a common thing for me) – no doubt a reaction to all the drugs sloshing around in my system – but they seem to have stopped again. And the good news? My sweetie friend C and I did a long run last Monday. I took a puff of my blue inhaler before we started, halfway through and again at the end. Guess what…we ran 6k! The longest distance I’ve ever run! 😀

This is my sweetie friend C. The beach is straight ahead.

So maybe a life with asthma is going to be okay after all? Check back with me next week to find out!

Have a marvelous Monday! 🙂