Breathing Difficulties and Their Effects

Last edited Wed Oct 7, 2020, 05:52 PM - Edit history (1)

I've had asthma most of my life. Since we moved to the high desert with its clean, dry air it has generally been well-controlled, but that doesn't mean it's "gone" and it can flare up any time with a variety of triggers: mold, stress, dust, pollen, infection, too much of certain foods, etc.

I treat it with great respect. It can kill me. It makes me more vulnerable to other problems (including, emphatically, the coronavirus infection) and can turn a mild URI into pneumonia.

For a number of years when I was younger, I assumed that the times when I wasn't conscious of an acute episode of bronchial spasm meant that I was "fine" and could ignore my asthma.

It took some serious bouts of pneumonia and persistent, serious bronchitis to teach me otherwise.

See, asthma isn't just about the acute bronchial spasms. You can be having an "attack" of mild bronchial spasm without realizing it, if you are not paying attention. You're not gasping for breath. You're not wheezing.

It can sneak up on you. You're not even aware that your breathing is growing shallower, unless something happens to make you suddenly try and draw a deep, full-chested breath, and you end up hacking up half a lung. An attack of pollen-related hayfever may seem all about the nasal passages, the snot and the sinus congestion, the itchy eyes, and you lose track of what's going on in your lungs until suddenly a sneeze turns into a cough and you're hacking up some nasty stuff and still not able to get to the "bottom" of a really satisfying breath.

When this happens you're already more than halfway to the major problem zone, which is a nasty place to be, involving a breathing mask with corticosteroid mist, trying to sleep sitting up, and occasionally even an epinepherine injection. No, you don't wanna go there.

The smart asthmatic learns to be alert for the symptoms of breathing difficulties before they get to that point. They're a bit subtle, but once you're aware of them, they're quite easily recognizable.

Basically, you're experiencing a chronic, low-level oxygen deprivation, "hypoxemia". Symptoms include headaches, changes or irregularities in heart rate, anxiety and confusion, a dry, shallow cough, and various aches and pains you don't even notice at first, but are the consequence of you holding your body in ways that compensate for the breathing difficulty you don't even notice.

I check blood oxy when I feel a headache, a little dizziness, mild nausea, etc. Or when my hayfever acts up. If I see a drop, it's a signal to pay attention. Am I doing something I should stop doing? (The wind is blowing dust around... stop gardening and go indoors. Drink some extra caffeine- a mild bronchodilator that sometimes helps arrest a developing episode. And so on...)

I treat my breathing with respect, and I'm maybe hyper-aware of how my own breathing difficulties can have an impact on my work performance, my mood, my interactions with other people.

This is only part of why I'm so diligent about avoiding potential coronavirus infection vectors.

If I were an obese seventy-something male with hypertension and signs of dementia/diminished mental capacity, I would hope very much that there were people around me who cared about me enough to help me notice and deal with my breathing difficulties.

Because prolonged hypoxemia can end up doing (even more) damage to the brain.

thoughtfully,
Bright