Waiting to Inhale

DISCLAIRMER: If anyone reading this is fortunate enough NOT to know what Asthma is like, but is willing to find out for the sake of better understanding what I'm talking about in this blog... Then try this quick exercise:

1. Inhale.
2. Exhale.
3. Inhale & hold breathe (3 seconds)
...one...two...three...
4. Then, INHALE again.

Did you feel it? Not much air coming in with that last breath, right?

That's asthma. Only it's like that for some people 24/7; myself included.
Asthma is a continual inflammation of the bronchial passageways (tubes that carry outside air into my lungs). Even without an asthma "attack," it's been a struggle since I was 12 to take big deep gulping breath of fresh air. The same things happen to my lungs with cold air--but in spades.

While physically struggling through the winter season as a Wilderness Instructor, it was a physician in Maine who figured out that my already-diagnosed Exercised-Induced Asthma was joining evil forces with my newly acquired Cold-Induced Asthma.

For whatever reason, my lungs and heart work overtime to turn cold air into warm breathable air. When I take a breath during the cold months, not only is there less room for air flow, but what does get in-- just hurts. Like thousands of ice-knives in my throat, stabbing all the way down to my neck, chest, lungs, stomach...

But one year ago, my doctor said Mylanta. Not really. But my doctor seemed to like the idea of my trying Singulair especially since I was using my inhaler to treat both my symptoms and as a preventative. When my doctor heard that, she made it very clear that my asthma fell into a category of: NOT AT ALL UNDER CONTROL YOU SILLY AMERICAN GIRL.

So, she refilled my inhaler prescription, wrote me one for Singulair and I started taking it that day. I figured, the worst that could happen was that it wouldn't work. I mean, my inhaler was OK for helping me breath a bit better --and if you don't know what an inhaler tastes like, just picture making a big pot of Mom's Spaghetti Sauce, burning the pan, throwing out the sauce, then eating the burnt pan. Yeah, not so much the yummy as the not-yummy.

But when I wasn't having an asthma attack, I could manage a little shortness of breath. I mean, as long as it wasn't below 55 degrees. Or raining. Or humid. Or dry. Or allergy season. Other than that, I'd be totally fine. And until that first hour when my first dose of Singulair kicked in...I never realized just how much air I had been missing. It had been fourteen years since I last had a real full breath like that. It was beyond incredible.

I could breath in and breath out and actually feel the air filling--FILLING!--my lungs. Oxygen! Joy! Lots of Oxygen!

So it is not with a little worry when early this week, I heard about the FDA investigating Singulair --my sweet, sweet, wonderful, breath-giving, asthma-butt-kicking Singulair--, for links to some not-so-wonderful things including but --scarily-- not limited to:

-anxiety (a little bit yeah)
-seizures (no, thankfully)
-depression (only in the morning for about 3 minutes coming out of a dream)
-restlessness (yes)
-feelings of guilt (yes)
-hallucinations (I swear to got there's this yellow cat following me everywhere)
-irritability (no!!!)-aggressive behavior (no)
-tremors (no)
-trouble sleeping (yes)
-bad/vivid dreams (yes)
And the list keeps going, but I'll stop there for the sake of not freaking myself out anymore than the Singulair may already be doing.

So, though I've been chalking up my own change in behavior to the stress of the accident coupled with Real Life at Yale giving me minor anxiety about stuff that I never used to worry about (getting to work late even though I make my own schedule, weird dreams, not making my bed, wrinkled clothes, Law & Order reruns, driving); maybe its not just me. And if there's a chance that waking up feeling guilty for nothing at all is due to my asthma meds? I'm a little relived.
And, I know some of you --who will remain unnamed, Mom-- may think otherwise; but, guys, I'm no hypochondriac. And though this FDA v. Singulair stuff would explain more than a few weird things happening in the year since I started taking it, I'm a BIG FAN of breathing freely. So, for now, I'm keeping the Singulair until the FDA comes to my door and TRIES to rip it from my kung fu grip.
I'll take emotional instability and phantom cats over not being able to breath any day.
Until then, if anyone does any deeper google-ing, let me know what you think, or find, or know, or have experienced. It's going to be a while before I get in to see my physician, and this freaking cat is getting on my nerves.