My Experience Of Asthma (My Experience of Asthma)

Member Name: rossmoorlock

Product:	My Experience of Asthma
Date:	21/03/01 (168 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Just a part of my life now.

Disadvantages: Can cause a lot of problems.

My name is Ross Moorlock and I was born with asthma. I am 18 years old and although still quite young have a lot to tell you about my experience of asthma.
As soon as I was born it started causing me problems. I was a very ill baby and this was down to asthma. I could never breathe very well and was always fighting for air and for my life. I had new medicines tested on me as a last gasp effort and thankfully I am here today to tell you my story today.
It has caused me a lot of problems over the years and the ways things are looking at the moment I will have to spend the rest of my life worrying about it too.



An asthma attack is something that I am sure that you have all heard about. I am lucky enough to say that I have had not had one since I was about 12 due to a large amount of medication that I am currently taking. So what exactly is an asthma attack?
First of all you become weasy. When you breathe out you always end up coughing and you feel a bit uneasy. Soon you become breathless and struggle to catch your breath. This is very very scary as the only thought that comes into your mind is that you think you are going to die which only makes you panic more just making it worse.

The airways start to close more and more and the attack becomes worse. At this point I would be reaching for my blue inhaler as this would help to calm me down and would reassure me. But there will be times when a person is without their inhaler and need help from elsewhere. This is where you can come into it. If you see somebody struggling with their breathing. Try and find out what the problem is. They should be able to put a few sentences together and try and find out as much as you can about the person. This should calm them down, as they will know that somebody is there with them trying to help.
Something that always helped me was a glass of water. It just helps to clear the throat and it soothes the throat as well.
The most important thi
ng is that you keep the person calm. Do anything that you can do this is. Even hold their hand as this helps a lot.


It my early years I had regular check ups as my local hospital and spent a lot of time having tests taken. Nobody really knew the cause of my asthma and the medication that I was being given was not doing anything to stop it. As a baby I was put in a machine that was very similar to a large glass jar. It was to see how much air I needed and this was just the start for me of what was going to be a few hard years ahead.
My sister was asthmatic too and this meant that my parents had to be very careful with us both and it also put them under a lot of strain.
They had to get up a lot in the middle of the night to attend to their children who couldn't stop coughing. Having an asthma attack is the scariest thing that has ever happened to me and it really helps to have somebody there with you.

Even though I have now had asthma for 18 years I am still scared of it. To think about what it could to me is very very worrying. It has caused me so many problems so far in my life and I am sure that it still has a few scares to give me.
I can remember when I was young I had to do a lot of swimming as this was meant to help asthmatics a lot. I used to go at least twice a week. I also had to go to an asthma clinic, but I didn't really go there that much as they didn't really tell me anything that I didn't already know. I can remember blowing into a lot of peak flow metres to see how much breath I had and for some strange reason I used to really enjoy this.

It hasn't really stopped me from doing that many things. As you can see from the opinions in my profile I am a very keen tennis player and play about seven times a week. I always bring my inhaler with me onto court and always take it before I play. Not because I really need to take it half of the time but just because it reassures me a lot. I remember tha
t on sports day at school I always had to take it very easy, as there was always the chance of me having an attack.
Having asthma is very annoying, as there is nothing that I can do to get rid of it. All I can do is try and control it. I have two inhalers, which I carry around with me every day, and take about ten times a day. It is a bit of a drag having to watch myself all the time, but I just have to try and get on with my life. Having a cold or the flu can cause a lot of problems as it aggravates my asthma.

All my teachers at my school were made aware of it so they all knew what to do if I had an attack and they all respected my choices if I wanted to sit out of something if I felt a bit weasy. Hot weather tends to make my asthma worse as the air is very humid and I tend to get hot, sweaty and weasy. My medication is obviously very important to me, as it is now a part of my life. I have it on prescription but when I am out of university I will have to pay for it. I personally think that this is wrong, as asthma is not something that I choose to have, but is something that I have to live with. Why should I have to pay money to give me the same health as everybody else?

My friends have always been very good about my asthma and very supportive. I remember mates staying in with me at lunch times to keep me company at school when I was taking my nebulizer. I think that with any illness family and friends are always very important. They give you the fight and power to battle against it and to over come it.
Some people are not that nice about people with asthma. I remember some people in my school used to take the piss out of me. They would walk by me and start coughing and pretend to have an asthma attack. It didn't really bother me that much as I knew that it was not my fault and that I didn't choose to have it. In my secondary school the PE teachers never really understood what I was going through. When we had PE I occasionally a
sked to sit out because I felt a bit weasy and didn't want to push myself too far. To my surprise the teachers wouldn't let me and made me carry on. I always thought that this was unfair and wrong. The teachers should be made fully aware about what asthma is and respect any decision that a sufferer makes, as they are the ones that know the most about it.

At the end of the day, if I could have three wishes. Getting rid of my asthma would not be one of them, as I have come to live with it now, and it is part of my life and taking my inhalers is just part of a normal day for me. I know what to do about my asthma and know how far I can push myself, and I feel as if I am just the same as all of you lot.

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