What do you do on those nights that seem to never end, the nights a nebuliser feels like its taking hours to work and then you feel like it is hours before you can have your next one. Time feels like it is standing still and you are lone with your thoughts. The time where you end up thinking what would life be like if I didn’t have this? how would I feel if I could sleep a whole night? where would I be if i could breathe properly? what job would i be doing? what sport would i be doing?
It is all these questions which I find crop into my head as I sit having a nebuliser, or taking my inhaler for what feels like the hundredth time during the night just willing my chest to settle so I could sleep. Once it has all settled you lie in that state where you are too tired to read or focus on anything but your body won’t let you sleep as it is hyper aware of what has just happened and in a state of alert.
This is how I feel just now. Having slept about an hour I woke coughing and very short of breath, not wheezy but tight chested. Using my inhaler failed to work so I popped on a nebuliser hoping that would settle things enough to sleep. That was over an hour ago. with thoughts running though my head I decoded to write my blog in the hope of clearing my head and hoping for four hours sleep before I have to get up for work!
In these hours of nothingness when I am awake I often think about the what ifs in life and how different life is now from the life I thought I was going to have. Everyones is different I think from what they thought but is it through their own choices or matters out with their control which have brought them to where they are now.
For me it was matters out with my control. I could not predict my asthma was going to take such a different course causing a change in career and life style. I am very happy with my career and wonder that was it fate that made my asthma like this so i would have this career. Although work is a massive struggle because of my health I am very happy in the job I have but had this not happened would I be as happy in a job had I taken in what I wanted my original career to be in. I now cannot see myself in that career at all. Is it because I have got so used to the fact I know realistically I will never have that career and therefore don’t consider it as something I want to do anymore or know that if I did have that job I wouldn’t be happy because I would be constantly in hospital and probably not have a job due to ill health.
It is strange how your mind works in the long hours of night. But these are tonights thoughts. I guess as part of me after I have had my nebuliser I feel much better and then start considering if I could go the the gym again etc. These are very short lived thoughts as the rich chest and wheeze and breathlessness are bound to return sooner or later!!!
ANONYMOUS-ASTHMA 