Down the Wrong Path

I didn’t doubt the asthma diagnosis for a minute. In fact, I had secretly suspected asthma was the issue.  Having asthma made a ton of sense, I have a family history of it and, well, my current issue involved difficulty breathing.  The confirmation of my asthma suspicion was a bit disturbing; a chronic disease is never good news, but then again sometimes just having an explanation for how you are feeling can be somewhat comforting.  With a diagnosis you have the chance to work on a solution and to improve things, hopefully.  Maybe get back to my past life of being winded walking up stairs rather than from sitting and reading a book.

After deciding upon an asthma diagnosis, Dr. B put me on some asthma medication, and prescribed an emergency inhaler.  Now that I think about it, Dr. A in the Midwest gave me my first emergency inhaler.  She was an allergist (she was actually many allergists, it was a training hospital so I saw a different doctor each appointment.  In my mind they have all sort of blended together into this harsh-speaking, intimidating yet exhausted looking, brunette woman) and when I complained of difficulty breathing when I would run or climb stairs, she said that there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with me breathing wise, but that perhaps it was an allergy issue because I would only run outside in the park.  The inhaler never really helped so it ended up at the bottom of my sweaty duffel bag forgotten.  Anyway, Dr. B put me on some asthma medication and gave me an emergency inhaler and sent me on my way. 

I tried the medicine for a few months, knowing that these things can take time, before I decided that things simply weren’t getting any better.  In fact, they were getting much worse.  Dr. B decided that we should try some different medicine.  This medicine ended up not working so well because not only did my breathing not seem to improve at all, I also became depressed and stopped caring about schoolwork.  Or leaving the couch.  Luckily it was not around final exams and after forgoing the medicine I was able to catch up on my studies.  I went back again to something new.  This time I saw Dr. C because Dr. B was not available.  Dr. C tried yet another prescription.  It maybe sort of felt like it was working.  I guess sort of.  I wanted it to work really badly, particularly because I was told that it was the best option that existed, and sort of the last line of defense.  And, on a side note, did you know that best options are quite expensive?  They are.  Very expensive, even with insurance, particularly with crappy insurance like I had.  As an unemployed student living off of my savings account, paying for high-end, fancy-pants asthma drugs wasn’t really something I could afford, but I paid the money without hesitation.  I wanted so badly to be able to breathe.