I can feel my throat tightening already. If I were to vocalise this piece, I’d sound like someone taking her dying breaths. Maybe because I am. It’s that time again: the pre-episode signs are here and I’m on edge, waiting for my soul to begin gasping. I’ve been feeling short of breath for a few days now, and I know I’m about to have another near-death experience.
Daily Struggles with Asthma
Speaking for too long feels like my nostrils are pegged shut; every shower feels like drowning. It’s a few minutes to Iftar now, but I’m too scared to eat because a slight contraction of my diaphragm from a filled stomach might possibly collapse my lungs. I have to bail on basketball practice for a while and I dread being alone–no roommate, no friend around. Who’s going to know if I slump in the bathroom or suffocate in my sleep?
Oh, asthma, what a joy to live with.
The Cycle of Denial and Neglect
My phone lights up. How fitting–it’s an email from asthma.net. John has posted again. I haven’t kept up with the community for a while now, perhaps because I’ve stopped trying to understand however this thing works. Just like I’ve stopped using my inhaler tracker app. I don’t remember when last I logged a usage or checked my control report. And that is dangerous.
In my resignation, I’ve also stopped carrying around my extra inhaler. I’m not even sure where it is. Let me check…
(5 minutes later). I found it in one of my bags.
These are a suicidal combination of choices. Without knowing when I’m almost out of puffs, I run the risk of drowning in air on a random day, in front of my crush. It’s not a pretty sight. Eugh, what a ghastly thought.
The Fatigue of Constant Management
But I am tired. For long stretches of time, I often forget I am one of the chosen ones. I don’t remember I posses one of these ugly green greenades until I’m digging my purse for lip-gloss. Or until it, like an obsessed ex, throws itself at me randomly, casually serving the worst experiences for as long as it wants–thirty minutes, an hour, even recurring several times over a week. The message is clear: I’m never getting over the guy.
It doesn’t ever matter what I have going on in life–everything changes when asthma attacks. I could be engaged in the most life-changing conversations (life sucking too, if we consider my recent anatomy lectures) and suddenly my body forgets it’s basic survival mechanism:
Breath in… breath out.. Breath… where? How? Where’s the air supposed to go? Why is it stuck in my throat? Why can’t I move my chest? Why won’t it go in? Oh great, my mouth is opening now. I let something out. Oh, it’s just a dry gasp. Has anyone noticed yet? I can’t speak right now. Ah well, here we go again.
I try to take a breath now but I can’t. I laugh.
Navigating Everyday Challenges
I’m eating now, ever so carefully. I take a breath after every swallow to make sure I don’t feel asphyxiated yet. I’ll stop once I can’t take a full breath. As if teasing me, the weather gives her best burst of air. It’s about to rain, and my makeshift curtain is about to tear off the metal bars. The roof might tear off first anyway–the sound of the aluminium sheets is enough to scare my breath away.
The wind is rushing at me, like she is being hounded. She begs to be sheltered in my lungs, promises to fuel my body. But the guards close the gates, drowning her in a grisly slab of mucus. She has no home here, I do not get a breath.
n
The Impact on Activities and Dreams
My phone lights up again and this time it’s from the basketball team about our current training sessions. I think about the genesis of this all, how I slowly began losing my breath during warm-up sprints and gradually became a “5-minutes-bencher” because I had what simply seemed to be terrible respiratory endurance–I was undiagnosed and of course had no medication. I remember being so out of air once, I, for the first time, passed out. But only for what I think was a few moments (I couldn’t tell how long and didn’t ask). I came to in someone’s hands. The 2nd time, I was found on a classroom floor and promptly ferried to the clinic. Gradually it happened so. Finally I quit basketball and picked up table tennis.
I quit athletics too. My body became constrained to small bursts of action–100 metres and I called it quits. I’d cross the finish line and crash out, my oxygen debt tying my muscles together, pressuring them to spit out what they owe, while I held my legs, begging them to do so faster.
The Mental and Emotional Toll
Suffocation is easily one of my worst forms of torture. Bring in anxiety, and we get a top tier villain. To physically feel like I might die is terrible enough, but combine that with a battle in my head and I quite literally kill myself before my lungs do.
Every asthma attack, I think of death, every episode pushes me to the door. My entire life plays out in my head at the fastest speed, and suddenly I realize I’m not ready yet. Death mocks me in those moments for how I romanticized her and I wonder if I ever really was suicidal. Maybe I was, but expiring due to a factory default is not how I imagined it to be.
A Birthday Nightmare
It’s raining heavily now. I try another breath. It’s close.
It’s 8.06.
It was around this time, that day, 2 years ago. They rushed me out, frantically searching for the car keys. Almost two hours later, we were back, having concluded what will forever remain the worst night of my life.
It was my birthday, a night to my Post-UTME which I was already freaking out over. A search for a hospital, harassment by a doctor, an argument–all happened while barely being able to respire. It’s a memory painfully funny not because I nearly lost my life, but because of the mental trauma I experienced. We never again acted like that night happened, as I returned to my bed after receiving no treatment. I shut my books and prayed for the worst, for myself and the doctor.
Resignation and a New Kind of Acceptance
The rain has stopped now. I try to breathe again. It feels better. I refuse to use my inhaler until it gets to the worst. It’s going to come anyway, why suffer on the way there?
Again, I am tired. I am resigned. Ever since that terrible night without a nebulizer or epi, I’ve resolved that I can rawdog any breath-taking situation now. Afterall, “I thought I couldn’t do without it.” I guess I can, and whatever will happen will.
I am really tired of making asthma a significant part of my identity and now I just let it come whenever it wants to, surprise me if it will, pass when it decides. I’m weary of tailoring my lifestyle to suit its tyranny. I spend more time cooking than I’m supposed to. I eat fried foods often. I’ve dropped tennis now and I am back to basketball, your faithful “5-minutes-bencher”.
Now I just keep convincing myself I need more exercise, like someone always says. Perhaps she’s right: this thing might be in my head. Whatever the case, I estimate I have about two days till my guest arrives. That means I can fry akara tomorrow.
Living with asthma is a journey filled with challenges, anxieties, and moments of unexpected resilience. It’s about finding a balance between managing the condition and refusing to let it define your life. It’s about acknowledging the fatigue, the fear, and the frustration, while still finding the strength to breathe – and to live.
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