Breathless Musings on Asthma

I am still trying to come to terms with the diagnosis of asthma.  Until about a year ago I thought you couldn't develop asthma as an adult, that it was a problem that would have come up well before my thirties.  I was wrong.

Two Thanksgivings ago I came down with a typical respiratory infection, the kind that clogs you up with snot and has a cough that seems to last forever.  So I didn't notice right away that the cough was, in fact, lasting about... forever.  I finally went to one doctor about it and got dosed for walking pneumonia.  Okay.  A month later, starting to wheeze.  A different doctor gave me a steroid mini-pak.  Didn't help.  Another month, and I'm back to the first doctor, who gives me more antibiotics and an inhaler to calm down a suspected "reactive airway," which helps but only a little.

Fast forward another couple of months, and I have a coughing fit so bad that I start breathing rapidly and can't calm it down.  Being unused to lung issues, I do however feel this is more urgent so drag myself the very short distance to the campus student health clinic.  Turns out I'm in the midst of an asthma attack and get my very first breathing treatment.  This happens to get my attention more fully, and I finally go into "what the fuck is going on" mode.  One incompetent ENT and one highly competent pulmonologist later, I have a diagnosis of asthma, an appointment with a better ENT, and am on the fast track for surgery on my septum and sinuses.

All this time I don't really believe this asthma is here to stay.  Doesn't matter that the pulmonologist explains the situation to me.  Doesn't matter that I can't fully shake the cough unless I take all the medicine he gives me.  This is going to go away.  I have surgery to fix sinus and septum issues, the suspected aggravator.  The asthma still isn't going away.  It's not going to fade into the background, slip away defeated.  It turns out it is here to stay.

So this not-going-away business...  I have to revise my inner narrative, my expectations and feeling of what's "normal."  I have to take medicine, even if I don't like it, even if it's inconvenient, even if it's expensive.  If I don't, it turns out the cough comes back.  Every time.  This is feeling awfully familiar, kind of like, hmm, oh yes!  Depression!  I've just now come to terms with the fact that that other "little" illness is never going all the way away.  How many years of therapy, how many little pills reluctantly swallowed, before finally getting this across?  Most of my life.  Depression is not new; I've been swimming in its greasy waters from birth, whether it was the moods of others or my own, and you'd think I could have come to terms with it sooner.  Turns out I'm stubborn, who'd have thought it?

But deeper than all this, all the way at the bottom, what I'm most angry about is that I feel my body has betrayed me.  It "should" work better than this.  It should be functioning perfectly all the time without any kind of help or maintenance.  It shouldn't matter if I don't feed it the right food, give it enough sleep, get enough exercise, take proper care of my teeth or skin.  Except I also know that's total bullshit.  If I don't do those things, why should my body be happy to go along?  I have only myself to blame then, right?  Except it's not that simple.  Some of this stuff is in my control, some isn't.  But it's simpler to either blame my body or blame myself.  Shades of gray are too much work.  Making meaningful lasting change is too much work.  But consider the alternative.

Am I punishing myself by making these bad choices?  This is a dialogue that has been going on for years now.  Why self-sabotage?  Why this deep-down-in-the-bones belief that it doesn't matter, that nothing I do will ever make things better, right, whole?  Do I deserve to feel better?  Do I deserve anything really good?  I seize pieces of satisfaction but do I deserve any of them?

My sister recently told me of a belief that grief exits through the lungs.  I appreciated the observation, because whether you take it literally or figuratively, it helps explain the timing of this asthma thing.  In the past year I feel like I've really started to understand and let go of some long-held hopes and desires.  Letting them go does involve grief, and stress, and pain both emotional and physical.  I guess if the asthma were, in some small way, part of the process of getting past these self-destructive and self-hating impulses, it will have been worth it.  At least, I hope so.