I am merely sharing what I have learnt about my cough variant asthma in the hope that it may help someone else who find themselves newly awakened to asthma, like I did recently. Perhaps others will share their valuable lessons so that we can continue to learn about living with asthma.
About asthma
- Don't take your diagnosis lightly. Asthma is a changeable thing and can hit you out of the blue, even after years of being rather docile and obedient.
- Until you have experienced an attack (even a non-life threatening one like mine), you have no idea what nasty things asthma can do to your body!
- Every person experiences asthma differently but we can still share our lessons and learn from each other. The emotional support and knowledge that "I am not the only one" works miracles.
- Seek help. If have found the Asthma UK forum tremendously helpful.
- Educate yourself. I had to learn quite a lot this past weekend about the basics of asthma! The Asthma UK website has a wealth of information.
Keep a record
- If you have to take your asthma medication more frequently, it is impossible to remember when you last took your reliever or how many puffs. Keep a record!
- Paper records don't work for me, but my phone is an extention of my hand. I tried a few apps (this post on the Asthma UK forum has a good summary of what is available). I decided on Asthma tracker and it does all I want it to do with a few workarounds eg entering the oral steriods, the preventer inhaler and a change in my condition as notes. I now have an overview of each day's events and can track how long the reliever inhaler is helping before I start coughing again, which really helped me maintain a balanced view. At one point I felt like I was taking the reliever with no effect, but found that more time had lapsed than I thought.
Peak flow
- Peak flow is important. Take regular readings and keep a record. The Asthma app is perfect for this as it shows your highest PF reading on the overview, but keeps individual records of readings (time and reading) in the breakdown of each day.
- Understand how PF works. There are some good posts on the Asthma UK forum, but this post on the Asthma UK website gave me a good overview.
- Your personal best PF depends on a lot of different factors. I found Emma's comment on this post helpful.
- PF is only one factor. Your PF may be good but you still have asthma, or low and no symptoms. For me, I regret not keeping a record of my PF earlier as I think it may have warned me of the possibility of an asthma attack. In hindsight, I can see that my breathing had been affected in the days/weeks before the attack but since I didn't take readings, I can't correlate. Learn from my mistake! Even if you feel good, record your PF!
Use your inhaler correctly
- I had become very lackadaisical about how I use the inhaler and did not get the best out of it when it was crunch time. I had to research again how to use it properly and found it did make a difference. This post was helpful to check and improve my technique, in combination with this video.
- Use the spacer. I had been carrying my reliever inhaler in my handbag, using it without a spacer. It is not as effective.
- I still am not sure whether I am supposed to breathe in and out, or breathe and hold. I think the breathe and hold is more effective but if you can't hold, the tidal breathing technique is advised.
- I rinse my mouth each time after using the reliever inhaler, and brush my teeth and tongue twice a day after the preventer inhaler. I developed thrush (fortunately mild) in the summer because of being complacent.
- Care for your equipment properly. I thought rinsing the spacer once a week was sufficient, but found that it needs washing in soapy water, no rinsing in clean water afterwards(!) and letting it air dry. Watch the video on this post.
Asthma plan
- Dig out your asthma plan if you have one. Get one if you don't! When I got mine 2 years ago, I never realised how useful it would prove to be! Thank you to the asthma nurse who gave me one from the onset! Then I thought I'd never need to use the amber section, but this weekend I had to. Praying I never have to use the red section!
- It is easy to get confused or forget what you are supposed to do when you are feeling panicked and out of control during an attack. It helped to have a set of guidelines to follow.
- I have taken a photo of my asthma plan and saved it to a location on my phone where it can be easily found. I don't always have the paper version with me, but the photo is there for me to refer to any time. (For me the best location is Dropbox. I wish that it could be linked to the Asthma tracker app but that option is not available.)
Read this post by Emma for her lessons and experiences, which are VERY valuable!
No comments:
Post a Comment