Fighting to Breathe

Let's start this by saying that asthma sucks. I don't get it very often, it's usually illness induced, occasionally weather changes are the cause and one time it was stress induced. But when I feel my lungs constrict and feel like bricks are being placed upon them, when I start wheezing and coughing so bad I get horrible headaches and my throat starts hurting, I know it's time to pull out my trusty inhaler. One or two puffs from a non-expired inhaler brings nearly instant relief with air rushing back into my chest. Only now it's not such a trusty inhaler. Not since the environmental...enthusiasts...got ahold of it. Now it sucks. The relief is no longer forthcoming, and I have to turn to my nebulizer for a breathing treatment, just to get the medicine into my lungs. And according to the doctor I just saw, apparently this mediocre inhaler is going away too, and is going to turn to the powder type. Now, I've had powder inhalers, and they're great for their purpose...which functions as a long term solution for treating and preventing asthma symptoms. It is not fast acting. It is not an emergency inhaler.

I am mad. I am furious. I may not need my inhaler very frequently, but it's reassuring to know that it's there when I need it, waiting to send a burst of medicine in to free my constricted airways. And I usually do not have it so bad initially that I need the absolute emergency feature of the rescue inhaler. But lots of people do. My brother and two of my cousins for instance. My little brother has had to deal with asthma his whole life, and sometimes that rescue inhaler is vital. Same for my cousins...and multiple other members of my family.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for saving the environment. But really. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think a few rescue inhaler are going to do too much damage. Why don't they focus on the big things that hurt the environment like cars, chemical plants, deforestation? I would be willing to bet that the people who started attacking rescue inhalers and similar medical technology have never relied on one before. I'm sorry that my desire to breathe is so awful to you. To those who initiated these changes, leave us the hell alone and go "fix" something else. Your "input" is not wanted nor is it welcome. Now I'm going to go to a breathing treatment so that I might have a few minutes without coughing and feeling like I can't breathe. And when I finally get this under control and can breathe again, I'm going to go to my cupboard and take my old expired rescue inhaler outside somewhere, and I'm going to puff it until it's empty.