asthma diagnosis

Warning: This blog is not meant to give any medical advice, please don't follow my bad practices, and always, always follow your doctor's advice. I do not mean to scare anyone, and everyone responds to medicine differently, my response is usually extreme compared to the general population, so please do not think that this applies to you.

YES I do have Asthma! It does feel good to admit that, since for a long time, I have been denying it and convincing myself that it's not true.

So how was I diagnosed? Well it all started in 1st year of uni.... I completed my first year of university and decided for some reason that still escapes me to take a summer course....well by the end of march my body was tired, exhausted and immuno-suppressed, and of course I got sick. I did stay home for a week to get better and then after a week, started going out again but my cough never went away.

Some might say that's normal right? That's what I thought, even though my mom was urging me to start antibiotics, I was stubborn and knew that "if you use too many antibiotics, resistance will increase" at least that's what they taught us and what I constantly read, so I was stupid and ignored my mom's advice....

A week later, I was sitting in my room studying and noticed I couldn't take a breath in...I couldn't breath, couldn't talk and started gasping, let me tell it's SCARY the first time it happens, VERY SCARY, well my parents were terrified and drove me to the emerg, where guess what the first thing the triage nurse asked? where's your inhaler!

I of course, didn't know what an inhaler was and answered I didn't have one, after which the nice nurse proceeded to tell me that hyperventilating does not help, and I needed to take deeper breaths...and guess what? my attack stopped....I was breathing normally again....now after another 3 hours waiting in the emerg, and an x-ray that was normal, a doctor saw me for 2 minutes, listened to my lungs (where I'm guessing he heard the wheezing) and said I have asthma...yes 2 minutes for the diagnosis and explanation that changed my life, I should have timed it!

I then was put on the neb for 5 min, was given an asthma inhaler and was sent on my way, miraculously we actually convinced the doctor to also give antibiotics since I had a fever.

It took 2 months to recover from that 'cold' with the antibiotics at home...only now I also had a constant fear of going to sleep and not being able to breath so I would have panic attacks and hyperventilate and of course used my inhaler for them....no I wasn't educated about asthma anywhere, or any symptoms, since in wonderful ontario, I don't have a family doctor, and if I did, I would have to wait 2 weeks to see them...and another year for for a possible referral to a pulmonologist....

So do I have asthma? Or was it just a case of bronchitis? Well with the antibiotics the cough and fever did go away, but the wheezing and hypersecretions didn't, so my guess is that I DID have acute bronchitis and that was causing the cough but because I didn't treat the infection quickly I developed some permanent asthma symptoms which I can't cure.

Should I have gone to the doctor and have been properly diagnosed? Still undecided on that, since the walk-in doc has only 10 min to spend with me, and in my case it's not that clear. Plus the only thing the doc could do is tell me to take the inhalers if I have symptoms.

After the 'cold', I decided to took charge of my own health and started researching diet and sickness. I ended up adding more dairy to my diet, and I chose to eliminate sugar. I basically would not eat any cookies, cake, sugar, honey, sweet juice or donughts, am I crazy? YES, but I was desperate to do something to not get sick anymore, and for me it actually worked and I do get sick with less frequency and severity. Of course stress is also a major factor, and after that year, I ended up switching majors because I realized that I hated it, was very stressed and my health was suffering.

Also, as controversial as this is, if I have a cold now, I don't let it get as bad as before. My rule is that if I'm still coughing badly after 10 days, I go to the doc and ask for antibiotics, since I know that personally, my cough will not go away on its own and it WILL get worse. I realize that this is contrary to what most people should do, but because of my asthma and hypersecretions, the infection does NOT go away on it's own, and my body needs help treating the infection.