My Experience Of My Asthma

Asthma is the leading cause of chronic illness in children and is responsible for nearly 10% of the Emergency Room visits for children <15 year of age. It occurs in as many as 10%-12% of children in the United States and is gradually growing. Asthma can begin at any age , but most children have their first symptoms by age five. Because Camp Wapiti is for children ages 8-13 exclusively, this report will focus primarily on childhood asthma.

Task analysis is the process of obtaining information about a job by determining the duties, tasks, and activities involved and the knowledge, skills, and abilities required in performing each task. There can be broken down into six

Breathing is a vital process for every human. Normal breathing is practically effortless for most people, but those with asthma face a great challenge. During an asthma attack, breathing is hampered, making it difficult or even impossible for air to flow through the lungs. Asthma is an increasingly common problem, and has become the most common chronic childhood disease. At least 17 million Americans suffer from it(1), and although it can be fatal, it is usually not that severe(4). There is no cure for asthma, but with proper care, it can usually be controlled.

On the eve of my seventeenth birthday, I was having a birthday party with my family, and I was not feeling well. My asthma had been bad for the past few months, but seemed to be worsening. I even had to leave my party for a little bit to take an aerosol treatment. That seemed to help, but only for about thirty minutes. I started to wheeze again, and I was not able to catch my breath. I have had asthma all of my life and have been in the hospital several times for exacerbations. After my family had left, my parents knew I needed to go to the emergency room. I took my rescue inhaler right before my parents and I left to go to the emergency room. We ended up going to Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Once I arrived, there was a long line ahead of me, but a triage nurse listened to my wheezing and sent me straight to the front. The nurses seemed panicked when they took me back to a critical care section of the ER. When I got in a room, I knew it was serious because there were five nurses and two doctors. I ended up staying at Children’s Hospital for a week and being on oral steroids for four months. Because of my asthma, I missed a lot of school during my junior year. I was on oral steroids for a long period of time, so it began to weaken my immune system.

Let me tell the story of a little girl who grew up loving film. I vividly remember sitting at the foot of my mother’s bed watching television movies on our old big box TV. I grew up with chronic Asthma, so as a child I would often find comfort in moving images on the screen as the continuous hums from the nebulizer soothe me and the steroids released my constricted airways. Around the age of six I learned to give myself Asthma treatments without waking my working single mother. I would come into my mother’s room for comfort as she slept, gather my medicine, turn on the television, and escape to a world that was full of wonder. This was when I first fell in love with film.

Now, by this time my asthma had disappeared completely. For years now here in the US I have had no asthma attacks like the ones I used to have in Cuba, and for all practical purposes I was no longer an asthmatic. I was in good shape, but the concern was still there, especially for my mother, who had suffered through my asthma attacks alongside me in Cuba. The thinking for us was that perhaps the 14 hours at sea during the 1980 Mariel trip, and all that vomiting I did somehow had “cleaned me out” (that is what my mother used to say), and the sea had taken my asthma away. Looking back, what I think probably happened was that in Cuba we were living in very polluted surroundings, and for allergic people like me the air pollution exasperated me to the point of making me asthmatic. All that Hollin (soot) Grandmother Hortensia used to have to clean all over the house every day in La Habana was an indication of the pollution of the city air, pollution which at nighttime as the air cooled would condense further in the lower atmosphere, making people like me suffer asthma attacks. Here in the US, the air was a lot cleaner, and thus I was no longer asthmatic.

I never thought of it as a real problem until then. That night, I had a sleepover at my friend’s house when it happened. I woke up with a sharp feeling in my chest. I couldn’t do anything but writhe in agony and there was nobody I could call to help me because everyone was asleep and I was hurting too much to call out to somebody. A gnawing pain was getting harder and harder to handle. I sat there trying to breathe, when I realized what was going on. An asthma attack was occuring. I was dangling on a precipice of disorientation. I desperately needed to drag myself over the my bag and get my inhaler. I couldn’t stand up because I was lost in a never-ending sea of suffering. I couldn’t locate my inhaler after searching for what seemed like hours.

Asthma is one of the most prevalent respiratory diseases. It is a chronic condition with recurring, exacerbations characterized by bronchial hyper-responsiveness and inflammation leading to airflow obstruction (Cabana, et al., 2014). Over time, the chronic inflammation may cause permanent damage to the airway (Wenzel, 2012). Asthma affects people of all ages but typically begins in childhood (Wenzel, 2012). This paper will explore the pathophysiological mechanisms of chronic asthma and acute asthma exacerbation. Additionally, it will cover how age and behavior can impact the pathophysiology and influence the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. Finally, mind maps will illustrate, visually, the epidemiology, pathophysiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis and treatment of both the chronic and acute phase of asthma.

History of Present Illness: Ms. Johnson is a very pleasant 66-year-old woman who was previously evaluated in this office by Elvira Aguila, MD for the diagnosis of asthma. She was last seen in January 2015. She states that overall, she has done well. However, over the last two to three weeks, she has noticed increasing shortness of breath as well as productive cough, rhinorrhea and postnasal drip. She states that she has been using her rescue inhaler above and beyond what is normal for her up to 10 times a day yesterday and she states that she has had some improvement in her symptoms with her short acting bronchodilator. She denies any fevers or chills.

The good thing about asthma is that there are a lot of medications available to help treat asthma sufferers with acute onset of symptoms as well as help with the long term prognosis of patients. Asthma medications are classified into two groups, Controller and quick-relief. Controller medications are designed to help prevent asthma attacks. Their purpose is to try and reduce the chronic inflammation thus making the body less likely to react to triggers. Some of these include long-acting beta-agonists, Leukotriene modifiers, Mast cell stabilizers, Theophylline, and immunomodulators. Long-acting beta agonists are bronchodilators that assist in opening up your airways. These are normally aerolized medications. The bronchodilator causes the muscles

During the clinical experience, I was able to care for a patient with the diagnosis of adult onset asthma. J. D. was a twenty-year-old with a one-year history of mild persistent asthma. His body mass index was 30, and he was a former 1/2 pack per day smoker for one year. Also, other lifestyle factors included social alcohol drinking (1-2 drinks per/day) over the last year since he moved out on his own. He did not regularly exercise, and he admitted to not using his daily Qvar. He lives with a roommate that does smoke in the apartment. His sister was the only family member with asthma and was diagnosed in childhood. He was being treated with a low dose inhaled daily corticosteroid (Qvar 80 mcg/daily) and a short-acting

In the mid-summer of 2000, I was "Twin B" born at 38 weeks. When I was a-week old, I developed a high temperature fever. After changing my formula four times, my parents found out that I was allergic to milk proteins. A few weeks later, I developed a cough that literally took my breath away, and I would cough so much that my face would turn blue. Doctors had given me several types of nebulizer treatments in order to deliver a water vapor medicine into my lungs, which did not work. Then, I lost my voice due to vocal-cord paralysis, which tied ends to a whooping cough. As a result, I was hospitalized for more than a month. When I came home, I still had no voice to cry like a normal baby. Thus began my condition of asthma, evidently inherited

Having Asthma can affect a person in a number of ways. The physical symptoms can range from the occasional cough all the way to life-threatening cases which are not being able to breathe. The seriousness and frequency of asthma symptoms is all dependant on how well the individual can control their Asthma. There are three symptoms of Asthma, the first being airway obstruction. Allergic substances and environmental triggers make a chain of muscle surrounding the airways tighten, and air cannot move freely. So my theory for this type of symptom would be; if a person was running through a park surrounded with many blossoming flowers, they began to sneeze and became short of breath would be because of the pollen floating around in the air. The second symptom is inflammation; with this type people have red swollen bronchial tubes, which are the airways of the lungs. This inflammation is thought to add greatly to the long-term damage Asthma can cause to the lungs. So my understanding for this type would be; a person has had inflammation for years and now has severe damage to his lungs. So therefore, treating this inflammation would be to the key to managing Asthma in the long run. The third symptom is airway irritability; the airways for people with this type are extremely sensitive. The airways tends to overreact and narrow due even the smallest triggers like pollen or animal dander, My theory for this type would be; If a person has got a new with really messy hair that

As my class arrived in the computer lab, I was tentative about whether or not to remark to the teacher that I was having breathing problems. Back then I was ten years old with Asthma ; I was extremely shy every time I had to interact with my peers. I was supposed to type a mini-essay for my computer class, but the lack of oxygen reaching my lungs made feel overwhelmed. At that instant, I decided to go up to the teacher to request to go to the nurse’s office because my throat was hurting. Surprisingly, she said I could wait because she didn’t see it as an emergency.

From the information gathered from the case study above, SE asthma is not well controlled because, she has been using her albuterol metered- dose inhaler approximately three to four days a week over the last two months. She has been awakened by cough three nights during the last month. She has shortness of breath during exercise, which does not usually occur to her during exercise. She has been hospitalized two times in the last year due to her asthma exacerbation and SE has visited the emergency department six times for the past six months due to asthma symptoms and exacerbation