Today, I was in class after feeling sick all day. But I had chatted with the professor and he promised he would cover a topic specific to my needs. I ended up hiking uphill to the building and then climbed 2 floors of stairs.
I was doing fine for the first hour of class. I coughed just a couple of times, but I was paying so close attention to the lecture that I did not notice it was an oncoming asthma attack. Suddenly, I coughed loudly a couple of times and just couldn’t exhale. The only way to get out any air was to cough or to allow my diaphragm into spasms so I could exhale.
I calmly reached down to my purse and pulled out my Albuterol emergency inhaler. You have to shake these babies before using them, so when I started shaking it the lid flew off across the room. That’s when other grad students noticed something was going on.
I then exhaled as much as I could and inhaled a puff from the inhaler. I held my breath for 10 seconds. But I was continuing to have exhalation spasms. I waited a couple of minutes and then used the inhaler again. I was spasming to exhale for another minute and then things started to ease. Within 5 minutes, I was able to exhale and breathe fairly fully.
So I am pretty sure this Albuterol sprayer saved my life today.
Always remember that asthma often sucks but cannot blow.
