It's My Life

Whinings of an asthmatic

The weather is killing me nowadays. I love the coolness that rainy days bring, but my lungs cannot take it for much longer.

You see, I’m an asthmatic. I used to have childhood asthma, but I thought I more or less recovered, till I got admitted in hospital for pneumonia last year. My doctor there told me that my asthma had returned. At the time I thought, oh well, no big deal. My childhood asthma didn’t cause me much trouble or inconvenience.

Only this time, it’s different. Come rainy or humid days, I feel like an old man. I get short of breath, chest constriction and lots of phlegm. Even on normal days the phlegm still don’t go away and I still get occasional chest constriction episodes. It sucks. It makes me feel like a sick old man. I’m only 24 this year.

I can’t enjoy cold drinks, desserts and ice-cream as often as I like to, or as often as I used to. They make me feel worse, especially on wetter days. By right, I can’t take too much spicy food too because I noticed that my phlegm gets worse after having a spicy meal. But that’s one luxury I still give myself, because I think food is bland without the spices. Even so, I’d cut down on super spicy stuff like Laksa, which I used to have often.

The worst thing is… coffee makes it worse. And I love coffee. I’m one of those who can’t live without a coffee at least once in a couple of days.

And the funniest thing is, before I got pneumonia I used to smoke more than 10 cigarettes a day. Nowadays, I can’t even take it if there is somebody smoking around me. I’m like one of those aunties who’d go “Aiyo, so smelly!”, pinch my nose and get out of the smoker’s way. Sometimes I wonder, what will happen to me if I ever go back to smoking again. I think I’d probably die.

I’m supposed to be on twice daily medication, but I don’t follow the regime. I don’t really like the idea of being on long-term medication. Maybe I should just give it a try and take the medicine faithfully for a couple of months to see if the situation improves by then.

I’m also thinking of taking Traditional Chinese Medicine or perhaps going for acupuncture treatment. I think TCM should be quite effective, based on what I heard from other sufferers. While western medicine can only treat the symptoms, TCM supposedly can cure the aliment for good. However, these are pretty costly as they tend to take a longer time to work.

I think for starters I’ll try to be a good boy and take my medicine first.

© 2007 this lush garden within.