Figure A shows the location of the lungs and airways in the body. Figure B shows a cross-section of a normal airway. Figure C shows a cross-section of an airway during asthma symptoms.
The graphics in this post and brief synopsis below are from the National Heart, lung and blood Institute
Asthma (AZ-ma) is a chronic (long-term) lung disease that inflames and narrows the airways. Asthma causes recurring periods of wheezing (a whistling sound when you breathe), chest tightness, shortness of breath, and coughing. The coughing often occurs at night or early in the morning.
Asthma affects people of all ages, but it most often starts during childhood. In the United States, more than 25 million people are known to have asthma. About 7 million of these people are children.
Overview
To understand asthma, it helps to know how the airways work. The airways are tubes that carry air into and out of your lungs. People who have asthma have inflamed airways. This makes them swollen and very sensitive. They tend to react strongly to certain inhaled substances.
When the airways react, the muscles around them tighten. This narrows the airways, causing less air to flow into the lungs. The swelling also can worsen, making the airways even narrower. Cells in the airways might make more mucus than usual. Mucus is a sticky, thick liquid that can further narrow the airways.
This chain reaction can result in asthma symptoms. Symptoms can happen each time the airways are inflamed.
Sometimes asthma symptoms are mild and go away on their own or after minimal treatment with asthma medicine. Other times, symptoms continue to get worse.
When symptoms get more intense and/or more symptoms occur, you're having an asthma attack. Asthma attacks also are called flareups or exacerbations (eg-zas-er-BA-shuns).
Treating symptoms when you first notice them is important. This will help prevent the symptoms from worsening and causing a severe asthma attack. Severe asthma attacks may require emergency care, and they can be fatal.
Looking back over these last months I realize I have been dealing with this since October and possible even as early as August of this year and prior to that I am not sure. And to say the least, I am on a terrible learning curve as to how to manage this disease.
While many Asthma attacks can be triggered by environmental triggers i.e. pets, smoking, dust, vacuuming, cold weather, the main culprit in my situation are bacterial infections—getting sick, and the cold weather…
My issue has been trying to figure out which is the cold symptom and which is the Asthma. Both issues cause excess mucous to be produced and terrible chest coughing.
This past few days has been a roller-coaster and I am still trying to recover. I am running into a potential health hazard for me. I will get sick, end up missing church services, get better, and then go back to helping out at church, get exposed once again and then end up getting sick. My immune system is not strong enough to handle exposure to regular germs like most people. It seems the slightest germ attacks me viciously.
On the 2nd of January, after having been healthy for about a week, I went back to church on a Wednesday to help out in our children’s program called Kings Kids. I enjoy the program, we have on average about 80 students each week and then in my classroom we have about 10 students sometimes more sometimes less. The class rooms are about 8’ by 10’ in my estimation.
By Friday myself and a few of my children were feeling sick and by Sunday we were a sinking ship. Several children had fevers, one was throwing up. Thankfully I had some medication left from a while back that my Dr. had given me to use in my Nebulizer breathing machine. I started taking some Monday and used two, Tuesday I used 3 and I had one dose left that I was going to use Wednesday evening. I was having some difficulty breathing Wednesday evening, and took the dose that night after church. That night sleeping was miserable. So much coughing, having to try and stack up pillows to sit up and I was running out of my puffer inhaler. In hindsight I see, based on having scoured the internet about Asthma episodes that my last dose of nebulizer was not having any effect because my Asthma had become so severe…I just didn’t know what was to come.
Thursday was probably the worst day I have ever had.My breathing ability had gotten so bad that I couldn’t walk across the house without breathing heavily. By heavily I mean like you see those people run the Boston Marathon and they cross the finish line and they bend over gasping for breath and collapse on the ground trying to get enough oxygen. That would be me…..and then it became that way just sitting on the couch not doing anything. I couldn’t talk to my children every word I would speak I had to stop afterwards and try and get enough air to say the next word. I have never been so scared that I was going to die as I was that day into night.
I had called my husband and told him I did not think I could make it through the weekend to get to the Dr. I knew my situation was bad, I just didn’t know how bad…I didn’t know what the severe symptoms were to watch out for. I am seeing an Intern Specialist(not that he is an intern…NO, he has been in practice for 25 years) not an Asthma specialist He was able to get an appointment for Friday morning. Now I just had to make it through Thursday evening. I had my emergency inhaler, however, it is the only one that does not have a counter so I did not know how much was left. The canister felt less than half full. I was trying to not use it during the day because the night time is soooo much worse with all the coughing. I needed to go pick up pizza for the kids to eat about 3 min. from the house for dinner. I made one of my son’s go with me and when we got in the car I told him how to call daddy on the phone in case something happened…this is how scared I was.
I used my inhaler once late in the evening prior to going to bed around 10pm. You are supposed to use two puffs but I used one to save it for any attacks during the night. I was able to sleep for two hours and then hit with a horrific cough attack. I awoke at about midnight and Tim was still up working. I went out and sat in our recliner hoping that sitting up would help and tried to lean on a pillow next to my head. At about 2am I thought I would try again to lay down. I had taken one more puff and the last puff from an older inhaler I had and was able to fall asleep until morning, praise the Lord.
Friday, yesterday, I went in and the nurse took my oxygen reading. At rest the oxygen level was at 87% the normal, where it is supposed to be, is 94% minimum. And my reading was at rest, it is only supposed to get low if you are active. I can only imagine what my oxygen level must have been the day before when I could not breathe at all. The Lord was truly watching over me. I should have been in the back of an ambulance heading to the ER and them pumping me full of steroids and oxygen.
I was able to get prescriptions for my nebulizer which should last me easily two months, and prescriptions for two more inhalers. Just in the nick of time if you ask me. It just overwhelms me to know now how bad I was on Thursday night. It has me crying just thinking about it. If you look at the picture below you will see this handy chart to help manage your Asthma. You always want to be in green, that is ideal.
Then there is yellow caution, I guess if you will kind of like a traffic light. Following next is red….you are in a serious state…and if you look below that is DANGER….this was me….If I had only seen this on Thursday, I would have done things a little differently. I can look at this now and see I have not been in the green zone yet and at least I now know what the symptoms are of the different zones and can take action immediately. I think you only need to have one bad Asthma episode to know what a bad one is and never want to go there again.
So I am hoping I am on the way to actually managing my Asthma and in the meantime I need to make some decisions with my husband as to whether or not I should continue working in this capacity at my church and find other avenues to help minister to others.
If you would join me in praying that the Lord would continue to watch over me and keep me safe and turn this disease around so that I can have a healthy quality of life. Thank you so much.
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