My battle with severe asthma started with a chronic cough almost ten years ago, which, despite several rounds of antibiotics to treat conditions like bronchitis, never cleared up. Instead, it got worse. After months of tests, my doctor made the diagnosis.
I suffered from asthma as a child, but my condition went away in my teenage years. Now, as a middle-aged adult, it came back with a vengeance. I tried the usual treatment—a mix of inhalers and anti-inflammatory medicines—for a few months, but I continued to cough and wheeze. Over time, my bouts of troubled breathing went from occurring every four hours, to every two hours, to every 60 minutes.
Eventually, things got so bad I couldn’t even bend over for fear of an attack. My asthma was so uncontrolled that I spent days at a time in a hospital because my husband and I couldn’t manage it at home. For five years, we lived like this, visiting doctor after doctor in search of solutions.
