Late Asthma Diagnosis

I knew something was wrong as a child. I had bronchitis more often than most. I was very sensitive to perfumes and smoke. My parents would smoke at the dinner table and I would hurry to eat my food and beg to be excused from the dinner table early. It was so hard to breathe but my parents assumed I was being a drama queen. I participated in athletics and dance; I did not really lose my breath during those activities unless someone was smoking nearby. Then one day it happened - I had my first asthma attack at age 50.

My first asthma attack

I was hospitalized for a week. I am a nurse, so I think everyone assumed that I knew how to deal with asthma, but I didn't. I worked in the newborn ICU. Preemies have bronchopulmonary dysplasia, not asthma. I had to ask for the education and was sent home without a script for a spacer. I returned again 3 weeks later and one wise physician gave me a magnesium sulfate infusion. Ahhhhh, at last I could breathe. It took another 4 months to get everything under control.

Managing my late asthma diagnosis

I am blessed that for the most part, my asthma is well controlled but when it flares, it does so in grand fashion. My family and I were on a cruise in the Caribbean in August. I went out to my balcony early in the morning and I guess someone came out to smoke on theirs and just like that I had an asthma attack. I used my rescue inhaler several times that day and began to feel normal. I made the mistake of going to my mother's cabin and could smell marijuana. I had an immediate asthma attack and went back to my room. My husband called guest services and the next morning I saw them moving folks out of their rooms with their luggage when we got to Jamaica. I also missed out on a lot of the games and trivia nights because they all were held right behind the casino's smoking area. Bummer...

Getting COVID with asthma

A few days after I returned home I was diagnosed with COVID. I got over that hump pretty easily with some Paxlovid and began to focus on shoring myself up for asthma peak week. My lungs decided asthma peak week was a week early and I had a sudden and severe asthma attack that I did not think I was going to survive. I used my rescue inhaler 4 times in a 6-hour period. My airway was so tight that I could not get the medicine where it needed to be even though I was using a spacer. Additionally, I was unsure where my nebulizer and medication were since we had recently moved. But it was easily found and the crisis was averted.

Navigating respiratory events

2024 has been quite the challenge for me respiratory-wise. I am maxed out on Symbicort and Singulair. I made it through those episodes and for that I am grateful. Honestly, I had not had an asthma attack since the end of 2021 but these respiratory events came on so suddenly and violently that I feel the need to carry a portable mesh nebulizer and a bullet of meds in addition to my rescue inhaler wherever I go.

I never understood why people would die from asthmatic conditions but those attacks I had made me realize that when you wait and realize you should have acted sooner, many times it's already too late.