I lost my sister over five years ago to an asthma attack. She was just over forty when she died. For most of her adult life, she was a heavy smoker. She suffered from bronchitis for much of the year and eventually she was diagnosed with bronchial asthma. This developed over the last couple years of her life. She never felt the attack coming on, and when she realized that she was in trouble, it was too late. She couldn’t draw enough breath for her emergency inhaler to work.

I was diagnosed with asthma as a child and have had to learn to live with the fact that each breathe can be a struggle. When I was a child, I really didn’t understand why I couldn’t play some of the games the other kids were playing. I would try to keep up, but in the end I was gasping for air like a fish out of water. As I got a little older, I began to understand and live with the condition.

I became more in tune with my body. I found I could run as fast as the other kids, over a short distance. I found that I could out run the other kids, if I ran at my own pace. I began to feel my chest tighten up on the onset of an attack. My arms and legs would begin to feel leaden. At this point I had two options. I could either stop and relax until the chest would begin to ease or take a puff on my emergency inhaler. I learned that what types of environments would cause the chest to tighten. I learned how far that I could push myself before I found myself in trouble.

In my case, asthma did not dictate my life: rather is set my boundaries. Unlike many people, I knew what I was able to do physically. I knew how far I could push myself. I knew the warning signs of an oncoming attack. I never put myself in a position to put my life at risk. I always have an emergency inhaler either on my person or close at hand.

I have had several attacks that I did not have an emergency inhaler with me, and have been able to continue breathing until I could get some sort of help. The whole key in this situation is to remain calm and don’t panic. Its not the fact that you can’t breathe, but in essence you are having difficulty in breathing. Just try to relax, and concentrate on breathing. To me any breath drawn is better than none, and it certainly beats the other option; death.

Many people take breathing for granted. Should you be an asthmatic, you don’t have that luxury. Although asthma is difficult to live with and if not taken seriously, life threatening. Since I had symptoms since I was a child, I could feel attacks coming on. My sister, on the other hand, never took the time to understand her triggering devices, and the signals that her body gave her to indicate an attack was coming on. Her lack of understanding of her condition ultimately led to her death.