Relative Something

Ever since I was positively diagnosed as having asthma by a pulmonary specialist in 2008, I have been at a loss to understand it. I had no clue that the physical reality I had been experiencing was not normal health. The test data showed that my below normal lung performance improved with a dose of medication. The doctor prescribed a daily control medicine.

I started taking it as prescribed, even though I wasn’t able to clearly detect a beneficial result. I was such an unconvinced patient that my clinic prescribed a device to measure my lung volume to help me gauge my status. I used my medication through the period I was trekking in the Himalayan mountains, yet still had breathing difficulties that forced me to depart from the main group I was traveling with and descend early. After I got home, I grew weary of maintaining the routine of twice-a-day inhaler doses. I went rogue and stopped using the control medication.

After a 4 or 5 months, I got a cold that settled in my chest and never seemed to release its grip. I checked in with my clinic and they renewed my prescription for the control medication.

In my mind, I only knew of asthma as an affliction that influences its victims by way of attacks; flare ups that caused a person to struggle for breath. That is not how it affects me. A flare up for me appears slowly over many days. My lungs become inflamed, giving me a wheeze and a cough. It is not something that requires a rescue inhaler.

I stayed on that dosage routine for a few months until I again grew weary of the routine. I made the (basically uninformed) decision to quit trying to remember to use the inhaler twice a day, and cut my dosage in half by only using it once a day. Eventually, my curiosity led me to stop altogether, despite warnings on the package against doing so without consulting my doctor.

My reason for stopping the medication is that I want to find out what condition my lungs are in without any treatment. Is it the same as when I was first diagnosed, back when I had no clue my lung function was not normal? Or is it worse, to the point that I need to maintain the daily medication to be free of a chronic wheeze and cough?

 So far, I am experiencing an increasing level of obvious unhealthy lung symptoms. My self-diagnosis experiment does not offer much in the way of knowing if it will stop getting worse and reach a stasis. It has been three weeks now since I stopped, and I am beginning to wonder if I will be able to tell when I am at the new un-medicated normal. Is there a bottom point to be reached? Time will tell.