Asthma

I have dealt with this horrible terrible thing for eighteen years. I have never had asthma, only very bad allergies, but I have watched my family suffer with it for far too long and I hate it!!

My first experience with asthma was with my husband before we were even married. I remember clearly him not being able to breath and sitting with him at the hospital while we waited for them to give him a treatment that seemingly cured it. Luckily I only had a couple of these experiences with him but I remember how clearly watching the person I loved at 15/16 suffer so badly scared me to death.

Then only a few years later, I got my first terrifying experience with asthma. Howie, now 12, was seemingly born suffering from it. For months they wouldn't diagnose him with it and I had to fight them on that, but he had it all along. By the time he was six months old I had spent several hours holding him in an ER waiting room waiting to get a treatment for my little baby who was gasping for air. He would turn blue at his daycare and I would rush to get him and bring him to the hospital. Finally at six months they decided he had asthma and sent us home with a nebulizer, I have never been so happy for a little machine. My poor baby went through these spells for the first two years of his life quite often, and then it seems to have just left him. He has horrible allergies, but the asthma appears to be, at least for now gone.

And for a few years our house was fairly asthma free. Then Reagan came along. Reagan wasn't born with asthma and has always been a big baby/toddler, now preschooler. He doesn't look like anything could bring him to his knees, you would think he would knock down anything in his way. But that is just not the case, this horrible disease, can completely devastate my poor four year old and leave him almost lifeless on the floor within an hour left untreated. He knows what a treatment is now and knows to ask for it and knows that it helps him, but it breaks my heart to see him suffer so with just taking a breath.

And then my final, or at least I am hoping it's my last, experience with asthma. Heaven, my 15 year old daughter, always very healthy, very athletic, was diagnosed with it last year. She suddenly couldn't run to second base without being bent over out of breath. She is now on an inhaler, which she forgets to have with her continually, and desperately needs it for almost any exertion. Which is heartbreaking for me to deal with as she lives for her sports and yet when she is out there doing them I have to fear for her life. What if she doesn't remember her inhaler and pushes herself too hard? What if she doesn't want to ask her coach to get the inhaler and runs out of breath? Terrifying thoughts for a mom who lives for her family and loves her little girl very much. I've watched as she turned white on the basketball court because she didn't want to be taken out and prayed for a timeout or halftime so that she would get some rest and catch her breath.

It is a very difficult thing, to watch the people you love struggle to take a breath. I would wish it on no one.