My name is Wayne and I have asthma. I was diagnosed with it roughly at the age of 14, right after spending a summer recovering from Whooping Cough. My sickness did some damage to my lungs, and I have never completely recovered from it. Honestly, up until now, I have never really given it a second thought. Some days are bad, especially when I was younger. But I always just took the medication prescribed to me without understanding what I was taking or why.
For me, allergies are one of a few triggers I have for my Asthma. When the spring season starts, I usually will start having issues. Some seasons are worse than others. For example, right now (Spring 2021), I have hardly had any problems this growing season. However, last year at this time, I had severe issues. I had to utilize my nebulizer, and it took about a month for me to feel back to normal. This was concerning at the time because it was a few months into the Covid pandemic. Your mind would play tricks on you and puts your thoughts in places it doesn’t need to be. Anxiety and stress are other big triggers for my Asthma, so this could’ve played a part in the longevity of that asthma attack last year.
Now that I am in my 40s, I still have moments where my asthma bothers me, but nothing like when I was a child. When I was younger, it would put me in the hospital from time to time. There are things I need to do to still help keep things under control. My wife is Celiac which has caused us to learn a lot on how food impacts the body. So I have started to look into not only getting better at exercising, but also understanding if there is food that I should be avoiding that could be causing issues.