Basil and Rodney take a little time to enjoy the view
I
t always starts at night. I wake up groggy, wondering if I heard a sound, or if my cat, Basil, curled up on my legs again and woke me. I’m a light sleeper. After that first hour of deep sleep, anything can stir me from slumber. But this time, it only takes a moment to realize that it’s my own body waking me up, murmuring in my chest, telling me I can’t breathe. I’m used to it by now, so I remain calm. I try to take in a short breath, gauge how severe the wheeze of breath squeezing through my lungs is, and I clear my throat. I take several more breaths, deeper now, hoping it is just a slight irritation and I’ll be able to drift back to sleep without getting out of bed. So far, this is just wishful, dreamy thinking. I always have to get up. I slip out of bed, walk to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, and grab my red emergency inhaler for quick relief. I breathe out, my chest wheezes and constricts and I cough. I haven’t exhaled all the air in my lungs, but with my next breath, I’m inhaling a misty steroid to stop my bronchial tubes from swelling any further. In the next few minutes, the muscles relax and sweet, fresh air fills my lungs once again. Asthma, as I recently learned, is classified as a disability by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Disabilities are defined by impairments that limit one or more “major life activities.” Since breathing, apparently, is a major life activity, those suffering from asthma are also
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ABILITY
considered to have a disability, and can receive SSI benefits if it is severe enough. Asthma is a chronic illness, like diabetes, cancer, hypoglycemia, and HIV, and is shared by approximately 300 million people around the world. I haven’t always had asthma. I wasn’t the kid who couldn’t play sports without packing the inhaler, I was never rushed to an ER by a worried parent and I never got the sniffles and itchy eyes around flowers or from dust or the numerous pets we adopted. My symptoms started when I was 19. In the summer of 2007, I came down with what I thought was a nasty respiratory disease which kept me up all night hacking and wheezing. Some nights, instead of getting rest, I would walk downstairs and then pace around outside in the cool night air until my lungs would calm down enough for me to return to bed. Hesitant to see a doctor at the time, I looked online to seek answers. My symptoms seemed to indicate bronchitis. It’ll go away, I thought, so I stocked up on cough suppressants and Nyquil. But after a month of coughing, wheezing, and generally feeling like I was suffocating in open air, I decided it was time to go to the doctor. (It probably didn’t hurt that my boyfriend threatened to leave me if I didn’t go.) At the clinic, my pulse was taken, my blood was drawn