My Struggle With 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

“Final call girl’s four by eight-hundred-meter relay” called the official. The Ontario Track girl’s four by eight-meter team trooped up to lane one, in unison. I would not have wanted to be racing with anyone else but my relay family. We had trained all season for this one race. Every workout, asthma attack, tear, and shin splint has lead up to this one race to break a twenty year old school record. As we jogged with the official from the bullpen to the starting line, the crowd had uproars of excitement for the athletes. An immense smile grew across my face, not only from the ecstatic crowd, but from the anticipation to race. I approached the starting line, in the first lane, while my teammates arrayed along the fence with the other second,

In an emergency situation, why is a drug most commonly delivered via injection versus an oral route?

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.

As someone with Exercise Induced Asthma, I have personal experience with the topic. I have experienced most of the symptoms described in my research, tried

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.

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.

1.2. During an asthma attack, the air passages become narrow, their surrounding muscles tighten, and stickier mucus is produced. Patients experience symptoms like coughing, wheezing, chest tightening and breathlessness. Severe asthma attack can cause restriction of oxygen into the lungs and bloodstream (British Lungs Foundation, 2014). This can be dangerous and life threatening if immediate medical treatment is not received. Asthma symptoms are usually severe at night (NHS Choice, 2014). This can disturb patient’s sleep and can affect their behaviour and concentration. Asthma can also affect the patient ability to do physical exercises as well as their daily routine.

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.

Instead of being confined with asthma I would usually spend my days outside and fight. I told myself that asthmatics are stronger because we know what it feels like to not have air, to stare at the sky and wait for our air ducts to open, to be aware that we are still trying to grasp the slightest oxygen that would warm up our bodies. ‘I am an almighty god’ I chanted in my head. Even if there were medications, such as albuterol, I despised them because I believed that medications can internally destroy you. My rebellious mind discouraged supplements that ‘suppress’ my asthma symptoms. I did not believe that medications would permanently help a person; you would feel deteriorated the next day, creating a vicious cycle.

To be honest, I feel pretty lucky that I’ve never had to deal with what I would consider a major obstacle or problem. So I hesitate to call this a hardship or obstacle because in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t so bad. I do have asthma, it was pretty severe when I was younger, but it’s much improved now and I will probably grow out of it completely.

The pathophysiology of Asthma includes inflammation of the airway. The way in which this works is from an irritant which can include dust, pollen, cedar, or cat hair. When a reaction occurs, the airways become inflamed and narrow. The narrowing occurs because once the inflammatory response is triggered by an irritant, histamines, immunoglobulin E antibodies, and leukotrienes are released. Because of this, mucous production occurs. Since the bronchioles are inflamed and narrow, breathing becomes difficult. Wheezing sounds can be heard due to the lack of air being able to easily move in and out of the narrowed bronchioles.

Asthma is an inflammatory disease that impacts 300 million people around the world. I am one of those 300 million people. Asthma attacks happen when my asthma symptoms get worse, and my muscles around my neck tighten, and my airways get swollen. My airway swell up and then it gets very difficult to breathe. My asthma is exercise induced which happened on a day I will never forget.