SHARE YOUR STORY
What's Your Story?
Hannah’s story
Linda’s story
Dougie Ford
Head Teacher
Balmedie School
When did your asthma begin?
My breathing difficulties started from birth – when I was born the delivery was complicated and I had been starved of oxygen with the umbilical cord being wound around my neck. I remember my parents telling me I was a very deep blue colour when I was born and spend a bit of time in the incubator/ICU until I was well enough to go home.
What treatment did you take and how is it managed?
I remember from a young age having an ‘intal spinhaler’ where you would place a capsule inside of it and breathe in hard – it would activate a fan that would make a whirring noise, and you would suck in the medicine a few times. It was a pretty cool device, and I needed to use it a lot in my younger years. I also remember having to take lots of medicines and vitamins etc.
In my older primary and teenage years, I used blue and brown inhalers to manage my asthma, these were a bit less clunky than my first one and much easier to organise and carry. I also had pills to take which were reviewed every few years as new medicines would come out.
Growing up this didn’t stop me doing what I wanted to do. I enjoyed playing and all kinds of sport activities just like everyone else – it was just I knew when I needed to take a wee break or manage my breathing with my inhalers.
In my late teens into my early twenties, I sought to find out more about my asthma and I was referred to consider a series of minor operations which may help my breathing/allergies. I was also diagnosed with a small airways disease which helped me to understand that it was mainly the tubes in my lungs that narrowed rather than my upper airways. This helped me to understand the importance of steroid based medicines, especially during periods of illness such as chest infections. Following this my asthma has remained mainly under control through continued use of my reliever and preventer inhalers.
Are you aware of your triggers and how do you avoid them?
Triggers will always be based on over exertion so knowing when to take a rest has always been important. Damp and cold weather can also trigger my asthma so increasing my inhaler dosage helps to manage this more positively. I also suffer from a lot of allergies so additional medication for this (especially in the summer e.g. hay fever) is also important to manage and review (along with annual jabs where necessary!).
How has asthma affected your life and those around you?
This condition has been throughout my life and my family. Both my parents became asthmatic (mum in her early teens, dad in later life), one of my grandparents also developed asthma in later life and died of COPD (he was a war veteran, a smoker, loved his tobacco pipe and lived a long and happy life until the grand age of 83). All of my grandparents smoked.
My sister also developed asthma in her mid-teens, but the rest of the family were non-smokers (but in this timeline smoking was everywhere and you were always exposed to cigarette smoke in public areas).
It has been almost a ‘family’ condition which probably meant we just naturally became very positive a nagging each other to look after ourselves and our own individual ways to manage this condition.
I now have two children (two girls at 3 and 4 years of age) who have both been diagnosed with asthma and now have the same inhalers as me! I think it is fair to say that asthma may be hereditary in my family tree. Throughout my life, I have sought to take part and support in asthma research projects too.
Would you like to share your worst asthma experience?
I have always been a pretty laid back and calm person so even in the moments of feeling like I was struggling or could not breathe, I have always had a composure to stay calm and see through difficult moments. I have a high patience/resilience/pain threshold which I would directly relate to coping with and controlling my condition, when it was most challenging in my younger years.
On one occasion in my late teens (when I had a nasty chest infection) I was probably at my very worst and was lucky enough to be already in the doctor’s surgery for an appointment and I was given a nebuliser treatment, and this certainly prevented a much worse outcome.
Why is asthma education important to you?
Like most people, you do not wish for any challenging condition to define or control what you can or cannot do. Some conditions can be obvious, and others are not, they are also not always so well understood by other people which can create a whole other range of problems.
For me, it is important that people can be as well informed as possible not just to manage their own condition but to raise awareness so that everyone can be better placed to understand risk situations and how they can be managed or best supported.
If you could share one key message about asthma, what would it be?
Asthma takes time to understand and manage properly at any age (or in some cases as we get older). Much like anything, you can choose to let a condition rule you or you can work towards managing the condition – asthma has never held me back in anything I have wanted to do but I have learned that to keep that ambition true, I need to continue to make daily adjustments and pay attention to what my body is trying to tell me if or when I overdo things…I guess this has helped me to be better prepared for the future challenges of old age!
