The biased breath

Asthma sucks. It sucks the life out of you.

For those of you who do know how it feels like, you know what I mean but for those who don’t, I genuinely don’t blame you if you think that this is nothing but an exaggeration of a medical condition which can be dealt with… but the thing is that the dealing is pretty temporary and it doesn’t always work with full efficiency i.e. sometimes it leaves enough air in your lungs to breathe but not to truly feel alive. It can be misinterpreted... it’s not that bad all the time but when it is, it’s on a slippery slope of getting worse…

Whenever there’s an acute exacerbation of this condition, that is whenever it is at its worse, every second starts feeling so long, every breath so heavy, you become overly conscious about every little movement, even a feeble action as if it’s a currency which has to be spent carefully so as to not use up much oxygen while doing so, as the oxygen supply to the blood in your brain is already reducing (due to the hypoxia caused by lack of breathing) which leads to a headache which adds to the agonizing discomfort; it feels as if the soul is slowly leaving the vessel; the bad part is that you can do nothing about it but feel helpless till you reach your inhaler or till somebody else gets it for you to calm your restless body… sucks for the people who don’t like taking any assistance from anyone.

Very few people have the understanding and compassion required to forgive any disturbance caused by the victims of this condition and so they add to your guilt of being an annoyance. People may understand the breathlessness and the hypoxia but what they don’t understand is how bad it can get- the abdominal pain due to the muscle fatigue caused by exertion while coughing and also the temporary visceral displacement occurring at the same time which can lead to hernia. There’s also the awkwardness to be dealt with like ignoring the eyes you feel on yourself while using your inhaler though they pretend very hard to not pay attention but fail anyway, adjusting the loudness of your cough according to the ongoing noise in the room or just invading the silence and grabbing the exact attention you didn’t want by making weird sounds which are unfortunately inevitable (as you can’t always run to the washroom whenever you want to clear your throat). You find yourself on the brink of living as you can’t laugh because it’ll end up in a cough which will just ruin the fun and so you have to act dull and not respond to any jokes, you can’t cry as it takes too much of your lungs to assist your lacrimal ducts to do the job and so you have to supress your sadness as its not as important as respiring properly and you can't even afford to get excited on the sight of anything or anyone attractive. Again, just talking about the exacerbated phases.

The nights are the hardest because that’s the time when you breathe the slowest. You are just too cautious about the position you lie down in and about who else is sharing the room same as yours i.e. whose sleep you are going to disturb and in front of whom are you going to embarrass yourself by coughing up in the middle of the night. You wake up out of breathlessness at any time whenever your bronchial muscles go out of juice to provide the strength of performing the most basic activity done by human beings i.e. breathing; and sometimes it happens more than once and you begin to wonder that why did you undertake the task of sleeping on your bed in the first place although the body pleads for rest that it deserves except for the lungs who shout that it is not worth this continuous irritation of sleeping and waking up again so frequently… sad for those who have dreams as they can’t continue them after they’re disturbed and sometimes they experience breathlessness in a more helpless manner inside those dreams as the subconscious mind has its way of indicating the current distress of the body to the brain in its sleep.

Throat infection if added to this trouble results in hell. Thus asthma patients need to be very careful about the amount while eating any food item that can be a potential trigger or getting cold or a simple season change or whatever they are allergic to so as to avoid the torture that follows but not many people understand this and label them as ‘uptights being extra’ which is really sad as they already suffer by keeping themselves away from the simplest form of happiness derived from eating something basic as ice cream; Can you imagine your entire childhood being spent without eating chocolates or always rejecting a drink too cold for you to have in all the birthday parties and family gatherings or not be allowed to play in the mud or get wet in the rain? (The list goes on) It not only affects the child’s ability to enjoy himself but also his sense of equalising himself with the world; it destroys his self-esteem and his restrictions start to make him believe that he is somewhat lesser than others of his age who can freely allow themselves to have the enjoyments without the consequences. It becomes a part of the child’s identity and damages his self-belief.

Some experience this just in their childhood and are lucky enough to gradually grow out of it but the unlucky ones are chained to their inhalers for lifetime.