I was actually diagnosed with asthma after I had COVID last year. Oftentimes, I just felt like I couldn't get a deep enough breath in, which was more frustrating than anything. Um, but I got an inhaler which helped a lot and now I rarely use my inhaler. I only have my emergency one on hand, which I only use occasionally.
When I was a baby I nearly died twice with it. I was in a little village called Wairakei in New Zealand and Taupo was about seven minutes drive away. It took me five minutes to get into hospital. Mum and Dad rushed me in in a car twice. I nearly died. I got in there in time and then ever since then I've had attacks a lot of years apart from the last probably 10-15 years where I've now developed first emphysema and now COPD so I have asthma, bronchitis and emphysema all together and I still smoke.
With asthma, I remember when I was young, it was really hard to just go running. I decided, you know what, I'm tired of being the short, fat kid who can't breathe. And so I decided to start outrunning the kids. And one by one, the fastest kids were just left behind by me. And I learned that this can be overcome. And when I moved to a new place with a higher elevation, it started a little lower, but then I went back to hard work, and now it doesn't affect me anymore. You can overcome just about anything, because the human body, and the human mind, and the will of the man or woman is strong enough to overcome these minor health challenges.
My mom didn't think I had asthma because she thought I was just weak and couldn't run and so it wasn't until I like fell down during a game and couldn't breathe that she like went to the doctor and so that was a really helpful experience because we were able to get it treated by running some tests so it was good.
So I've had asthma ever since I was little, and it's just something that I've gotten used to. I just always have to carry my inhaler around because I never know when my asthma will flare up. It definitely doesn't flare up as much as it used to. When I was younger, anything would trigger it, whether it was like cat dander, horse dander, dog dander, or just dust around the house. Sometimes that would trigger it, and I would have a really bad asthma attack. But ever since I've gotten older, the only time I need it is if I'm going to be like running a lot, then I'll need it to just make sure I don't wheeze and that I can breathe fine.