My Experience Of My Asthma

R.J. is a 15-year-old boy with a history of asthma diagnosed at age 8. His asthma episodes are triggered by exposure to cats and various plant pollens. He has been using his albuterol inhaler 10 to 12 times per day over the last 3 days and is continuing to wheeze. He normally needs his inhaler only occasionally (2 or 3 times per week). He takes no other medications and has no other known medical conditions. Physical examination reveals moderate respiratory distress with a respiratory rate of 32, oximetry 90%, peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) 60% of predicted, and expiratory wheezing.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

1. Degenerative disease experienced at a higher rate among Black/African Americans (vs. American majority statistics) Asthma is a respiratory disease that affects breathing, causing symptoms such as whizzing, shortness of breath, and coughing due to exposure to respiratory and environmental allergens which constrict airway sacs and compromise gas exchange. This disease can strike a person at any age, however, children are more prone to the onset of asthma. In the United States, about 27 million are affected and among them there are 18 million adults and 17 million children under the age of 17.

When I was just a young boy I always had asthma problems. I’ve had asthma attacks left and right from playing sports or any physical activity in general. Whenever my attacks were happening my mother would grab this machine called a “Nebulizer.” It’s a machine that has the same treatment as an inhaler except the Nebulizer has a breathing mask with a tube connected from the mask to the Nebulizer producing the same medicine as the inhaler. I used to always carry around an inhaler to school in my elementary and middle school years. By the time I was 15 I stopped carrying my inhaler because I’ve never had the need to use it until I turned 18 and my asthma became active again.